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Albino BN Plecos fighting

Randall Postlethwait

Randall Postlethwait

Seedling
Joined
2 May 2014
Messages
16
Location
Phoenix AZ USA
I started out with 4 male BN Plecos. I have 3 since one murdered another. Its been a month and now I have 2 others fighting each other. One has started to bleed from the eye. Is this normal? Is there something I can do to prevent this? They are all about 1.5 - 2" in size.

Link to a video of the two fighting. The injuries have gotten worse in the hour since I filmed this as they have continued to fight off an on.

 
I would separate them immediately if you have another tank. Why watch them beat each other to death?
Do they have some caves they can claim for themselves, hiding spots, breaking the line of sight with other plants, wood, etc..
It looks to me the injuries are also from the sharp edges of the substrate while fighting, or I could be wrong.
 
Injuries are probably due to the substrate when they fight, but I won't change the substrate for this reason alone. The have plenty of space to hide and separate. I don't have a separate tank to put one in at the moment. I think I will take the aggressive one back to Petsmart tomorrow or all of them. If I would have known about the aggression I wouldn't have added them to the tank.
 
I have 5 cholla wood pyramids with caves in the center of three wood pieces. The BNP's are usually in their own caves for the majority of lights on time. I was hoping it would be enough for them, but I guess not. I really don't want to add anything else decoration wise since I need the openness to harvest cherry shrimp and keep the environment clean.

Too bad they have to go, they were a good cleaning crew.

thanks for the input.

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To be honest, it's a very open tank, nothing to break the line of sight between them once they come out of their caves. In your tank, they are gonna see each other straight away. They are also out for most of the night when you don't look so don't let them fool you that they stay in their caves.

I have a bristlenose plec for a couple of years and I don't find him one bit useful in anything at all. Mine actually started eating my amazon swords as well recently. I have a common pleco in another tank for 4-5 years which is huge now. He is yet to eat a plant and he is a brilliant algae eater and is like a substrate hoover but obviously one can't keep those in most tanks.

Your shrimp alone are the best cleaners to be honest.

If you tank is mature enough I'd suggest a few otocinclus but they'd prefer tall plants and heavy planting and a constant supply of green algae an biofilm in the tank because some(at least mine) don't accept veggies or fish food.
 
I purchased BN Plecos because they are the only thing that I have witnessed to eat GDA consistently or at all from my glass.Other than GDA, I agree that BN's are fairly useless and I also have seen no benefit. I haven't had to clean the glass for the 1.5 months I've had them though which is pretty nice.

I also have 5 oto's in the tank,4 Amano, an assortment of snails, and 600+ Cherries. None of those really touched GDA for me and is pretty much the only visible algae I get in this particular tank (shrimp eat everything else before I can see it). I feed my Oto's fresh veggies in this tank, but my last batch of Otos in a community fish tank wouldn't touch the fresh veggies. I guess they were spoiled by other goodies in that tank.

Anyway, the BN Pleco's will be gone in the morning. They get too big anyway and I would have re-homed them once they hit the 3 inch mark.
 
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