Saturday, July 26, 2008

Plecko Disappears


This is a picture of my new plecostymus because my old one disappeared from the aquarium. Maybe a pre-plecko rapture? But as I looked more closely, I did spot the remains of a a rib cage and parts of a spine on the bottom. I learned today that pleckos can starve to death and not show it because so much of their body is armor. Apparently my previous plecko had gotten lazy. They will eat the food the other fish eat rather than gnaw away at the algae because they don't have to work so hard. But then they don't compete for the food and so they starve. (There's a political lesson in there somewhere, don't ya' think?) I think other fish probably feasted on his remains. (Like most of life, it's only pretty from a safe distance.) So I bought Leo, a leopard plecosymous. He's much larger than the old one and probably a lot harder to miss.

But here's the thing for you fish lovers with pleckos: they love to eat zucchini. The guy at the fish store said you can cut a small zucchini in half lengthwise, fasten it with a rubber band to a rock so it sinks, the plecko will have it hollowed out by the next morning. I also learned that pleckos can live 20 years.


Here's a bala shark swimming just ahead of a red-tail tinfoil barb. My tank has two sharks and three red-tails.


The red-tail tinfoil barbs are really pretty. These have grown considerably since I brought them home nearly six months ago. They are about 4-5 inches long and will grow another inch or two.


The smallest inhabitants of my 72 gallon tank are the tiger barbs like the one on the left. Some of these have also disappeared. I started with five and am down to three.

I like my aquarium. It's not a lot of work, but it's pretty (from a safe distance) and relaxing.
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