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OK, I had this question come up on another forum;

Will a pleco scratch or damage an acrylic tank?

I have seen plecos in acrylic tanks, but never thought about this question. There are some, that I might guess could damage the acrylic, as they have some very large and sharp armor. But, the question was more related to them "sucking" on the acrylic. With that thought, I had my own question;

Can a pleco, "sucking" on the acrylic, accidentally scrape off some of the acrylic? Maybe in extremely small amounts? And if so, I wonder if it could cause damage to the fish, or hurt it in any way?

Any thoughts?

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There is always a bigger fish...

My concern would be royal plecs, those monsters have some mandibles of death!!

Interesting question, i'm curious as well

Im sure its possible, but to some extent there is evidence that some algae eaters actually have a "cropping length" leaving a microscopic film of algae so that it will regrow quickly after a feeding.In this way they can return to the same spot to feed in a shorter time (which also raises some interesting questions about the duration of fish memory), it would be against their interests to totally ruin the algaes purchase from a surface completely.

From that point of view it would be less likely that a plec with that behaviour would damage acrylic, but then there are some bogwood scraping species that could definately damage acrylic over time, question is, would they do it or just be happy with their bogwood? After all, they dont typically remove silicone sealant from glass aquaria.

In any event since acrylic is chemically inert its unlikely that a plec would suffer poisoning from the tiny granules he might ingest.I cant imagine hed scrape enough of it off to cause gut impaction.

Interesting topic.

I'd be more worried about snails, Ive had snails chew litle pathways through equipment suckers and sealant before now.

Last edited by longhairedgit at 12-Nov-2005 01:53

The limnivores are fine (chates, ancistrus, all neoplecostominae, barys, most hypostomids, etc). It's the panaqolus/panaque you have to watch out for. They will and often do scratch the hell out of acrylic. That goes for all wood eating lasiancistrus as well. Other than the two quoted genera, it would take some time before any notable difference could be discerned. I would assume preadatory species such as scobins would do some heavy damage (though not quite as bad as wood eaters, whose dental hardware are designed to shave pieces off their respective sucking surfaces), but they are not big on glass hanging, and stick to the substrate like magnets.

Hmmmm, pauses to think.... Makes one wonder. I bought an artificial resin driftwood decoration for my 29 gallon tank. About three weeks after moving Petey, my dwarf rummernosed pleco in there it seemed he ate all the paint off it. What would he do to acrylic? makes ya wonder

I have a foot long common pleco in my acrylic tank. He has been in there for a year and I've seen no evidence of him scratching the surface.

Inert, yes, my wonder was more from a medical/scientific thought. Like is a small piece could/might get caught in the intestinal track and just lay there for a while. And maybe cut, or grind away at the lining of the intestinal track, causing more of an injury/illness, than from a poisoning.

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There is always a bigger fish...

Possible but freakishly unlikely I would suspect, most fish especially large fish at various times in their lives actually swallow small stones, sands and gravels etc on purpose. They are called gastroliths, and the fish use them to aid digestion, and even those that dont intentionally do it will consume tiny pieces of non- food items along with normal feeding. Acrylic is by nature unlikely to be any sharper or harder than any of these materials and in the tiny amounts that are scraped by a plec for instance I assume in about 99.99% of cases thered be no appreciable affect on the animals health. If it was a glass shard with its more crystalline and less fibrous structure , or piece of foil from a frozen food wrapper id be more worried. A bogwood scraping plec would be used to splinters, and this is nothing by comparison.



Last edited by longhairedgit at 14-Nov-2005 21:51

I agree, panaque/dentex teeth, excluding scobinancistrus, are designed not to splinter their respective feeding surface, but to gouge out small portions of it, effectively turning the material to dust. For an inert substance such as ac., I'd assume there'd be nothing to worry about. What particular species do you plan on keeping?

EDIT: Then again, I wouldn't keep any wood eating ancistrinids in an acryllic tank anyways, if only for display reasons.

Last edited by Cup_of_Lifenoodles at 15-Nov-2005 01:34

I beleive they are planning on keeping just some common BN ancistrus, probably albinos. I just brought this up for future refference and some other people's ideas and theories. Just one of those questions that has popped up that I have never heard or read an idea or a question like it before. So I thought I would throw it out here.

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There is always a bigger fish...