# Missing Pleco!



## Claire&Taz

Hi all, first time posting in this section. Just wondering if anyone can help solve the mystery of the missing pleco. We have (/had ) two butterfly plecos named Watson and Crick. Crick has dissapeared! He is no where in the tank, we have taken the filter apart and he hasn't wriggled in there. He was there quite healthy and happy yesterday!! The tank is cat proof and there have been no wet pawprints to suggest otherwise. The only explanation I can think of is that the poor guy has passed away for some reason and the other have rather grusomly disposed of him. Is this possible?


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## shortbackandsides

Claire&Taz said:


> Hi all, first time posting in this section. Just wondering if anyone can help solve the mystery of the missing pleco. We have (/had ) two butterfly plecos named Watson and Crick. Crick has dissapeared! He is no where in the tank, we have taken the filter apart and he hasn't wriggled in there. He was there quite healthy and happy yesterday!! The tank is cat proof and there have been no wet pawprints to suggest otherwise. The only explanation I can think of is that the poor guy has passed away for some reason and the other have rather grusomly disposed of him. Is this possible?


yes,i lost 2 in my bioorb,never found any trace!


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## scosha37

lol ...sorry laughing i thought you were missing the member called pleccy..lol:laugh:

Ok back to subject..yeah i find they do that i have one for 4 years he was fine one day and next day i looked at him..he was just a shell... i know it not the same as vanishing but still funny..i find my ealgy eaters do this just vanish...mybe we got a bamuda triangle in our tanks..lol

Mybe the member Pleccy could answer this ??....


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## Claire&Taz

Hi thanks for the feedback, yup it is a cold water tank. 35l (I think...) so quite small. Just have two goldfish, four cold water minnows ( I forget exactly what they are called.... partenr bought them and he's out) and up until recently two plecos. There is a fairly large stingray filter which keeps the water moving fairly fast and we are fastidious about checking water quality etc. There is a pic of my tank in my album and as you can see despite weekly cleaning we do have a huge problem with algae! The plecos were bought just because OH likes them rather than to clean the tank. Any advice on keeping the algae down would be great!


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## Guest

scosha37 said:


> lol ...sorry laughing i thought you were missing the member called pleccy..lol:laugh:
> 
> Ok back to subject..yeah i find they do that i have one for 4 years he was fine one day and next day i looked at him..he was just a shell... i know it not the same as vanishing but still funny..i find my ealgy eaters do this just vanish...mybe we got a bamuda triangle in our tanks..lol
> 
> Mybe the member Pleccy could answer this ??....




Now then...

As Fishyfins has said the tank is overstocked. I'll break down the question and give you some more info.

Goldfish- These can grow very large (the Common varieties can easily top 30cm/12" and the Fancy strains 15-20cm/6-8") and need a large tank or better still a pond (especially for the Common varieties). Also due to the amount of waste these fish produce an efficient filtration system is a must.

The Butterfly plecs- Butterfly plecs (_Dekeyseria brachyura_, L168) are a tropical species. These can also grow to 13cm/5" and like the goldfish, will need a larger tank. Also most L no. plecs won't eat large amounts of algae, they do in fact consume a large amount of wood, the reason for this is because the wood contains a chemical called Lignin which is used for digestion. Also as Fishyfins has already said they do need a fair amount of water movement which the goldfish might not accept.

The algae- As you probably already know, plants need certain things for photosynthesis. These are light, CO2, and nutrients. The same applies to algae, except certain types (such as green algae) actually thrive in oxygen rich water.

Fish produce ammonia through their gills and also solid waste, this is broken down by the filter into nutrients known as nitrate and phosphate. In a normal aquarium (with a very low plant biomass) these will become food for the algae. In this case the cause of your algae problem is an overstocked tank, and by adding more fish the problem will only get worse. I would also recommend testing the tapwater for nitrate and phosphate, if the tapwater has a high level of these nutrients, you will basically 'feed' the algae when you carry out a water change.

The final thing to worry about is light, if your tank is exposed to sunlight (even if it's only for an hour or so each day) it will spark algae growth. Also it is important to provide a suitable photoperiod, assuming your tank has a source of artificial light (either from a fluorescent tube, LED or a halogen bulb) then it would be a good idea to connect this to a timer. Like exposure to sunlight, too much artificial light will also cause algae.

In conclusion, try to obtain a more suitable home for the goldfish. You will be quite surprised when the algae disappears after removing the fish. In the future I would only recommend keeping the minnows.


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## Claire&Taz

They aren't standard goldfish. To be honest I'm not entirley sure what they are... They belong to OH. I do know the shop we bought everything from said the the tank was plenty big enough but to be honest I wouldn't be suprised if they were wrong as they had an awful lot of fish crammed into similar sized tanks. I keep suggesting to OH to come on here and find out more but he never does so it's left to me... I am planning on buying him a much bigger tank for his birthday. Do please bear in mind I am guessing tank size, it may well be bigger (or smaller). The smaller fish were also kept in with the goldfish (type unknown) in the shop? Needless to say OH is in trouble with me for not researching everything properly...:mad5:


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## Guest

I've just examined your album, the goldfish are a Black moor and a Calico (possibly a Ryukin). In this case they both fall under the fancy goldfish category.

To be honest I wouldn't really be concerned about the goldfish attempting to consume the minnows. Large carp will probably try it however the chances of the goldfish turning canabalistic are quite remote.


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## Claire&Taz

Thanks for the advice all. To be honest I'm as cross with the pet shop as I am with the boy. All of the fish in our tank were kept together in the shop and when pressed further by us as to what conditions we were told our set up was absaloutly correct. When we said we though plecos were tropical we were laughed at and told the particular type were not and could be kept with the gold fish (thanks for telling me what they are by the way). I would have thought we could trust the advice of the shop but apparently not. 

On a related note we were in the same shop recently and the place stank of what smelled to me like gone off vinegar. All of the tank were closed of and signs were up saying 'undergoing treatment' with a heck of a lot of dead fish. We have had ours for 8 months and have had no problems (until poor Crick) but needless to say I would never buy anything from that place ever again. :mad2:


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## Guest

How about you go back to the shop and show them this: Dekeyseria brachyura • Loricariidae • Cat-eLog • PlanetCatfish


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## Claire&Taz

Fishyfins said:


> i think when they said butterfly plec, they actually meant the hillstream loach, Beaufortia kweichowensis, also known as the hong kong sucker, or butterfly plec (even though plec is a misnomer, as they are not a plec)
> 
> Chinese Hillstream Loach - Beaufortia kweichowensis
> 
> one of these ^^


Now I am totally confused. I was there when OH bought the "plecos" and that is definatly what they were called BUT Fishyfins is right! The actual butterfly pleco from the previous link looks nothing like ours, it looks exactly like a hillstream loach. Why on earth were they being sold as butterfly plecos when thats blatently not what they were?? Or is this a common nickname for them and no one in the pet shop thought to tell us... Either way I'm raging as when we went into buy the tank etc we made it clear we wanted beginers advice and to speak to someone who knew what they were talking about.


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## Claire&Taz

I still feel awful for the fish. To all intents and purposes they looked perfectly happy and healthy. This is our first casualty but i'm not happy! After trawling the net for pictures I'm fairly certain the little ones are white cloud mountain minnows. So next question (thanks for all the advice so far by the way!), with the 1 blackmoor goldfish, 1 calico goldfish, 4 white cloud mountain minnows and now one hill stream loach what size tank should we be looking for?


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## Guest

I didn't think about the Hillstream loach, you should see the amount of ranting over on the PFK forum about these fish being classed as 'Plecs'.


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## Guest

A few people have also had the same problem when mixing plecs with Discus.


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## Claire&Taz

Cheers for the heads up. So ideally if I get a 100L tank I should leave the minnows and the loach in the little tank? Feel like a bit of a numpty with all of this...


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## magpie

Personally I don't see the problem with putting the minnows in with the goldfish 

I have 11 wcmms in with my 4 goldfish - the goldies don't bother them in the slightest, and the minnows love having the big tank to swim about in. They all shoal together along the front of the tank in the evenings... they're amazing to watch! Not to mention the fact that the goldfish are nowhere near fast enough to catch the minnows even if they wanted to! 

I'm assuming that your goldies are still pretty young, Claire&Taz? Someday waaay in the future, once your goldies get big enough, they might, _might _be a threat to the minnows, but for now I wouldn't worry about it. As for the hillstream loach... I wouldn't know, sorry!


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## Claire&Taz

Yup we have only had them for 8 months, no idea how old they were when we got them but they were very small and are still much much smaller than the sites i've looked at say they can grow. To be honest neither of them are that quick (I'm convinced that the Black moore would waddle rather than walk if he were human...) and the minnows do run rings round them. Just heard about a 75L tank going free, hopefully if we can get that it will be an improvment for them in the short term and then when cash flow improves I'l get at least 100L one. I'd rather get a 100L one straight off but hopefully 75L will still be an improvment! As for the remaining loach he has never gone near any of the other fish and they have never gone near him. He just constantly sits on the glass munching algae.


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