[AquaticLife] water tests
I just answered your other post but wanted to cover the other questions not covered in the other post.
Not all pleco’s are herbivores… in fact, very few of them are. Most of them are omnivores. You will have a very difficult time feeding a pleco green pea “meat” since the goldfish will beat him to it.
Did you ever identify what kind of pleco and the other catfish that you have? There are literally thousands of species of catfish and hundreds of species of plecos.
Do you have two plecos, a catfish and the two goldfish? If yes, you really, really, really need to decide which fish you want to keep and rehome the others to proper sized tanks. You will constantly have health problems trying to keep all of these BIG fish in an undersized tank. Just the two goldfish in a 30G tank is one goldfish too many. With five supposed-to-be BIG fish in that tank, you are doing you and the fish a disservice. I understand you just adopted them but you have to make the hard choices now. Check with your LFS. Once the fish are healthy, they should be willing to let you trade in the extra fish for store credit. I got $25.00 credit on a 10″ common pleco that I rescued from a 10G tank. It was only 4″ long after two years in the 10G tank and grew to 10″ after 18 months in my 65G tank but then it needed an even bigger home. I was planning a 125G but Hurricane Katrina changed my plans so I had to rehome the big guy.
A common pleco that is 10 years old should be around 15″+ body length.. even up to two feet long. If he’s not that big, then he is either severely stunted from being in the undersized tank or he’s not a common pleco. Pics would be helpful.
For future reference, always measure fish NOT including their tails since some fish have small tails and other fish, like fancy goldfish have long flowing tails. The tail does not add to the bioload of the tank.
Lenny Vasbinder Fish Blog - http://GoldLenny.blogspot.com (Links to any articles referenced in above reply are listed on the right side, alphabetically under Labels and also under Archives by Year, Month)
Category: Philippines Internet Koi Society
