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NEW - April 2005 My name is Mike and I live in Christchurch New Zealand. One of my
first jobs was as a shop assistant in a pet shop in town called the
Goldfish Bowl. This began my interest in tropical fish keeping. Before
long I had a 24" community tank and a general collection of fish.
Not long after a friend and I went halves in a pair of breeding brown
discus which we bred several times in his garden shed / fish room.
Selling the babies to local pet stores to further our addiction. The
24" tank became a 36" tank and my first pleco moved in, I got
him to keep the algae down as it tended to flare up from time to time
and man did he grow quickly, a few years later I was in 'The Fish Tank',
a pet store on Hereford street when I saw my first Fancy Pleco. A large
Royal Plecostomus with a price tag of NZD$75! A fortune to a 17-year-old
kid, but and after a lot of scrimping, saving and sheer begging to my
folks I got my first fancy pleco. It took me a while to work our what to
feed him, and I came pretty close to loosing him a few times before I
worked out that he needed vegetables included in his diet of pellets and
tubiflex worms. Blanched lettuce was his favorite although I never
thought to try courgette, which is now the staple vegetable for my
pleco’s. My tank is now a 48" containing no less than 11 plecos
of various sorts, plus Cory catfish and a few loaches; there are a few
Black Neon's so the upper tank doesn't look too empty. Back then there were very few fancy plecos available, no dedicated
food mixes for them and very little information available as to how to
keep them (this was pre internet days!) Now things are different,
excellent reference sites, readily available food tailored specifically
to their needs is available from just about any pet store and an
ever-increasing range of plecos are available from the better stores.
It’s never been easier to keep these cool fish in an indoor home
aquarium, and they are certainly a great talking point in a well light
living room tank. "OMG, look at the size of that shark in your fish
tank!!" What is a Pleco? A 'pleco' is a catfish of the family Loricariidae (pronounced,
lohr-ih-care-EE-id-dee) which means sucker mouth catfish. Generally they
come from South America and can be characterized by their armored plates and sucker mouth. We call them "pleco's" because
in the early days the Plecostomus plecostomus (now Hypostmous
Plecostomus) was about the only one readily available, plecostomus
is a mouthful so the name pleco was quickly coined.
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