How long can a Pl*co survive out of water
- Thread starter superstein61
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same thing happened to me with my snowflake eel. he just decided to jump out one day while i was on the comp and like 30 mins later i noticed him motionless and i told my dad and he comes running in and throws the eel in the tank. it just sank to the bottom and all of a sudden sprung with life :devil:
I think I read on hear about someone finding a catfish in some driftwood. They bought the driftwood at a store, so who knows how long the catfish was out of water. It was alive BTW.
not only that, but it was december, around 50 degrees most of the time because we put the wood into the back of the moving truck.
I also have another bristlenose (brother to this other one) that jumped out of the tank when he was just a bitty baby and lived among the bio-balls in my sump for three days. the water just trickled down through the bio-balls, they were not submerged, but the fish was fine. he's a little smaller than his brothers, but i can't say for sure if the 'incident' has anything to do with that.
It seems i've read about this in other places, and the 'teaching' is that you should always put plecos back in the water when you find them on the floor, because even if they're all dried up and you're certain they must be dead, they may not be.
Something about days without water and burying themselves in mud during dry seasons w/o water??
Something about days without water and burying themselves in mud during dry seasons w/o water??
my plec survived around 30 minutes out of water. i took an ornament out and forgot to check it as it was hollow and only when i went to find him in the tank did i notice he was missing.
had to smash it. BN plecs, as far as i have been told and in my own experience, hold on to stuff even if they are taken out of water hence he didnt plop back in when i lifted it out. bugger done it again with some wood i removed a couple of months later.
he is fine though and is still going strong, strong enough to fight with a 6" GT and win.
had to smash it. BN plecs, as far as i have been told and in my own experience, hold on to stuff even if they are taken out of water hence he didnt plop back in when i lifted it out. bugger done it again with some wood i removed a couple of months later.
he is fine though and is still going strong, strong enough to fight with a 6" GT and win.
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Horror of horror a few years back when I got a call from my sister while I was on vacation to find out that my tank had sprung a leak! She came in to feed my fish and the tank was completely empty - all my stock had died and there wasn't even water left on the floor. My pleco (about 3" at the time) had dug himself down into the damp gravel, however, and survived! It may have been a whole day like that....... He lived several more years but eventually mysteriously gave up the ghost. I was bereft - but he now grows rhubarb in the flower bed.
I am not sure how long my Pleco was out, but when I woke in the morning, I found he had jumped. He was very dried up and looked dead. I touched him and he jumped. Instinctively, I grabbed and put him in the cleaned fish tank immediately. Did some research: gave him one short salt bath in a small recovery tank and then put him back in the regular tank. (I didn't want to stress it too much with back and forth between tank, not myself that I had the correct salt and water ratio!) Just let him rest. A little over a month later and he's healing well. Armor is almost back to normal and he acts like the same ol' fish. Going to attach some pictures from day 1 recovery to today 34 days later.
We recently moved and put our fishtail supplies in storage for over two weeks. Our Pleco must have been in our sunken ship which was in storage unit for two weeks plus. We put ship back in tank in new house and a few days later he showed up swimming around like normal. He was not in water for over two weeks and he survived. He was out of water once before for a few days and lived. We call him our miracle fish!
