Plecos in fiberglass / acrylic ??
- Thread starter HarleyK
- Start date
I purchased a brand new 374-gallon acrylic tank. Of course I wanted to add a bunch of plecos. I have an 18" L191 in there. It liked to hang on the right side of the tank on the side, to get to the other side, it would use the entire front side of acrylic to hang on to, until it got to the other side where it also like to hang out for hours. It was in there maybe a week, and I sold it. Now in those two spots, there is a haze where its teeth have scratched it, same for the other side. Those are the only two spots you can see when the tank is filled. While doing water changes, you can see the entire tank full of tiny scratches. The algae like to hang out in those scratches, so it just takes a few extra swipes to clean the inside two or three times a month. I could imagine what the acrylic would look like now if I kept it in there for 5 years. I have a 240 with small plecos, also acrylic. But the small ones, between 3-8" all like to hang out on the wood, in their caves, etc. Here are there I see some on the side of the tanks an dI'm sure there are small scratches in there too but not like what the big boys make.
HarleyK
, Thanks for the tag, I have two plecos that I got as tiny babies. They were so tiny I had doubt that they would survive but they did, they were only about 1 1/4" long when I bought them, almost three years ago. I have them in my 890 gallon plywood build and it is sealed with Pond Shield and I haven't noticed any problems at all on the walls of the tank. To mention it, I can't even ever recall seeing them on the parts of the tank that are plywood. They get on the glass quite often and that makes it easy to measure them! One is about 1/4 inch longer than the other and they both are a shade over 12" long now. I keep 'em well fed!
I remember seeing tanks with moon craters in them from plecos. they made the tank look like a battle zone.
I had three gold nugget pleco L018 in my 180gal acrylic tank for about 7 months and the walls where they frequented were much more clouded as seen when tank was empty of water, but with water the difference is not noticeable at all.
My experience with plecos is very limited but from what I understand, any pleco that rasps surfaces they adhere to for algae will damage acrylic. Bigger plecos will do more damage.
My experience with plecos is very limited but from what I understand, any pleco that rasps surfaces they adhere to for algae will damage acrylic. Bigger plecos will do more damage.
I’ve had tons of plecos and only ever had issues with panaques messing up tanks. They absolutely destroyed the acrylic. All others were fine…pseudacanthicus, leporacanthicus, hypancistrus, Scobiancistrus, acanthicus, baryancistrus, etc
