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I JUST GOT TWO CLOWN PLECOS! im so excited! i'v been looking forward to getting these bad boys (ones a male for sure) for about two weeks now. I know all about there recomended diet, habbitat, and etc... now i just wanted to ask if anyone has any personal experiance with these plecos, and what has worked for them?

I always forget how many of these I have. They spawned, died, spawned some more.... I did count them when I moved them from the 55 to the 20g but I forget again. Make sure you have a ton of driftwood for these guys and you may have to live with your tank being somewhat tinted brown with tannic acid. They constantly chew off the top layer of the wood which would normally seal the wood after awhile but instead it releases tannins endlessly. Carbon was not enough and I had to use seachem's purigen to keep my tank clear but I have at least 5 of them. Purigen is expensive but rechargeable with just some bleach. I buy the 100ml bags since you can't over filter and then you already have the stuff in the right size bag that will withstand recharging. http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=4190

Having multiple pieces of wood with different densities(pay attention to the color and weight) is best. They also prefer a planted tank but will do fine with lots of driftwood to hide around. They eat most anything that sinks to the bottom and are fairly active both day and night. I can usually count 2-3 of them at any time during the day or at least see them scooting away as I walked up. If you provide a fairly high flow rate and some caves either through arched pieces of driftwood or pvc pipe they aren't too hard to spawn. There's lots of info on them out there if you do a search. http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/species.php?species_id=734

i do love planetcatfish! thank you for that information, I wouldent mind a yellowish/brown tint to my aquarium plus the dim lighting it would make for a diffrent habbitat than im used to keeping and thats just fine with me, i like to change things up from time to time.

Actually, congrats! Dwarf panaque are among the harder loricariids to spawn. I would love to hear your firsthand account of said spawning; I tried countless times with panaque albomaculatus, but alas, nothing. In fact, there are only a handful of currently active breeders of p. aff maccus, so you should document it and send it in to PC or somrthing. Few plecos prefer to spawn in pvc and would much prefer something slatesque...panaque seem to prefer wooden caves, actually.

I never did anything special to breed them. Mine just use driftwood. There is one piece that actually curves around to form a hole leading back into a "cave" over the substrate. Then another low piece forms an arc with a very low, narrow opening over the substrate which they forced their way under so many times it formed a little indent making the opening exactly their size. There was so much driftwood in the tank that if I didn't run any chemical filtration it would be too black to see into within a couple days. Now most of it's crammed in my 20g long so even with chemical filtration it's nearly black.

Then I really just neglected the tank. The only other critters in their 55g was some ghost shrimp and a female betta so I'd go months without water changes and sometimes even forget to top it off until the spraybar started splashing on the surface. Then I'd top it off and do a water change within a couple days. Accidental dry season cycles.

They got fed sporadically on various frozen foods. Whatever was leftover from feeding the other tanks that day which was everything from bloodworms and carnivorous foods to frozen marine vegetable/algae mix to veggie flakes and the occasional chunk of vegetable or mango I speared with plastic coated paper clips and dropped in. Usually I bought it to feed the guinea pigs and saved the fish a small slice. Despite having 5wpg and lots of plants that 55g has really been my bombproof, most stable, and least maintenance tank. I hope I can get it running again soon.

Every few months an extra small clown pleco or 2 would appear in the tank. Now there aren't many survivors from the tank sitting without filtration for 2weeks before I could get it from Chris' apartment but at their peak population several months ago there might have been around a dozen. I really didn't find them hard to spawn. Not many fry must have survived but all I did was pack a tank with driftwood and ignore them.

you just have to love an accident! It truely isnt hard, if your not trying too hard yourself. Just put them through a dry season (preferably a month or two long), and then do some water changes and if the dont spawn in a months time, try it agan. But make sure they have meaty foods at least two or three times a week. but im preaching, so i'll be quiet now.

To be honest, unless you've personally spawned or attempted to spawn said fish, ease of successful breeding is not exactly something you should be taking such a firm stance on. Even the easiest of the "panaqolus" to spawn, the LDA-01 group fish, are still of medium difficulty to spawn at best, and it just gets more difficult from there.


Also, you have pictures of your fish, sham?

My boyfriend's digital camera was rather cheap and I never did get good fish pics with it so I gave up. On occasion I did borrow my mom's camera. I'll have to see if I have any pictures on her camera or computer and after I charge the battery on her camera I can get pics of the surviving plecs. I do have some of when I first setup the tank and put all the extra fish I had left from various schools or other setups in it. This would be the first week it was setup with an extra filter still running to help cycle it, a few threadfins, Pecan my blue gourami, my remaining dojos who later died to a heating issue, and I think a male ram I moved out a couple weeks later to try to spawn with the female I finally found. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v244/aqh88/fish/55g/p1010111.jpg
The driftwood cave they always go into:http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v244/aqh88/fish/55g/P1010114.jpg If the dates on the camera are correct that's March 06'.

The tank changed alot from then until I took it down a couple weeks ago. The crypts really took over and that anubias nana I got years ago suddenly started to grow like a weed. I kept cutting off sections and putting it on other areas of driftwood until the whole tank was filled with anubias and all the driftwood has tangles of roots hanging down to the substrate. I've also got java fern coming out my ears and it covered the entire lower half of the big driftwood piece. Despite nearly all low light plants the tank ended up being heavily planted within the year. But I was kinda more concerned with actually getting it away from my exboyfriend and into my new house than with getting pictures before taking it down.