Do common plecos eat smaller fish? I have a tank with several kuhli loaches, a rapidly growing pleco, snails, and a few guppies, danios and tetras. I noticed the other night that I'm missing about four kuhli loaches. I check the tank every day and never see evidence of a dead fish. Could he be sucking them up like spaghetti?
My pleco, the carnivore?
- Thread starter Kuhlifan
- Start date
they are buried in the gravel... trust me you will think they are gone, you might not even see them for months, then one day you will see them. When I ran a pet store we never could find them to sell, they would bury themselves, so we had to start keeping them in a bare tank
Oh, I know. I've kept them for a long time. I actually have a sand substrate. The wierd thing is I've never seen them burrow, or even try. And they always used to come out when I fed them. Now, I usually only see two or three come out when I feed them. They used to swim around and play a lot too, but now they just kind of find a spot and sit still. I know that when you keep small amounts, they tend to be more subdued than when you have a large school. They're acting almost like the school got smaller.
I'll keep an eye out.
I'll keep an eye out.
Common pleco's will eat smaller fish. I saw one trap a feeder goldfish against the front glass at the lfs once. It went down quickly in a shower of scales as the pleco's teeth ground it down.
They could be passing away for some other reason and the pleco is seizing the opportunity to round out his diet. Some kinds of plecos are predominantly carnivorous, or omnivorous. I'm not sure he would want to catch a kuhli, but then again, plecos are powerful fish, slow as they may seem.
I've heard of commons eating smaller fish alot.... but I think it's funny how everybody talks about plecos being slow... it might be because they are juvies, but my two bristlenose dart around the tank! They are quick...
Well, a lot of people think they're slow coz they're just chillin a lot of the time... you know, eating, sleeping, hiding, whatever. But you're right, sometimes they take off and go! Whenever there's a dead fish in a tank with a common at the LFS, he's always chowing down.