CichlidFish.com - Fish That Think.

I have two pleco's with my two o's in a 75 gal tank. I was wondering if i should be putting in ant additional food for the pleco's to eat? They seem too big to be only eating algae, they are approx 5" long. I tried putting in the algae wafers that the LFS sells but the o's ate them all. Any suggestions?

I have had a pleco for about 10 months, and he is about 9" long now. I have yet to actually feed him specificly and I have no problems with algea because he eats it all. What I do is slightly over feed my oscars so that they spit out some of their food(this is not hard to do with oscars)... then the pleco will just scavenge what got spat out to supplement the algea he eats. Pleco's are 10x's worse then oscars about being spoiled if you feed them those algea tablets that is generally all they will accept from that point on... we have had a few members complain that the algea in their tanks went out of control right around the time they started feeding their pleco additional food. I know this sounds cruel but pleco's are one fish I recommend never feeding. Actually I think I should clarify... the only pleco I have any experience with is the common or sailfin variety... some of the more exotic species may have differant needs that I am not aware of.

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Adam

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Email me: Adam@cichlidfish.com
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If your Oscars make as big of a mess when eating as mine I would not worry about supplementing your pleco. My Pleco eats all the food O shoots out through the gills. I do supplement the pleco in my angels tank with sinking algae disks, as they eat all the food I put in their.

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Candice