• Welcome to the DeeperBlue.com Forums, the largest online community dedicated to Freediving, Scuba Diving and Spearfishing. To gain full access to the DeeperBlue.com Forums you must register for a free account. As a registered member you will be able to:

    • Join over 44,280+ fellow diving enthusiasts from around the world on this forum
    • Participate in and browse from over 516,210+ posts.
    • Communicate privately with other divers from around the world.
    • Post your own photos or view from 7,441+ user submitted images.
    • All this and much more...

    You can gain access to all this absolutely free when you register for an account, so sign up today!

I saw this fish...

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
It can take a long time to get an up-to-date response or contact with relevant users.
N

naiad

Apnea Carp
Supporter
Oct 11, 2003
2,897
449
138
43
...in a pet shop. I have never seen anything like it. I thought it must be deformed, but then I found some pictures of similar fish and it appears to be a normal species, Parancistrus.

It makes the stonefish and anglerfish look beautiful.

I am interested in all the armoured catfish, and I would like to keep some one day. That certainly looks like an interesting one.

Some more Parancistrus...
http://www.plecofanatics.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/12450/cat/520
http://www.plecofanatics.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/3284/cat/520
http://www.plecofanatics.com/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/520/page/1
http://www.plecofanatics.com/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/520/page/2

Lucia
 

Attachments

  • marbled oligancistrus.JPG
    marbled oligancistrus.JPG
    21 KB · Views: 197
  • Like
Reactions: sinkweight and Freediver81
that is one ugly pleco :D

my favorites were always the Farlowella and Clown Plecos :D
 
I had a more normal pleco that grew quite large and would take koi pellets from my hand at the surface.
 
  • Like
Reactions: naiad
I am trying to breed Ancistrus in my college and they do some funny things. I saw one Ancistrus using its tail to push food towards its mouth. I haven't ever seen a fish doing that before. I have also seen them eating while lying on their back on the bottom of the tank. A few days ago I went to see the fish and I found one lying on its back on the bottom. I thought there must be something wrong with it, but then it started moving around. Maybe they rest like that sometimes.

They are also extremely 'sticky'. Clown plecos will stick to the side of the tank as a form of defence, and they are very hard to remove. Ancistrus will stick to things like pieces of wood. They will even remain stuck when taken out of the water. Their spines also make them difficult to catch, and they use them when fighting, sometimes causing serious damage to each other.

The ones in the first two pictures in the first post have turned out their cheek spines, which are the bristles on either side of the face. These are normally tucked away in pockets on the cheeks.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: spaghetti
Nice one - it is one of the Zebra plecos. They have beautiful patterns. They have become very expensive recently, about £400 each, so they are being bred more.

I didn't know that they 'growl' - when I was catching some Clown plecos to move them to a different tank, I could feel the vibration of the sound that they were making, there was too much background noise to hear it.

Goldfish also make sounds. They are so quiet that it is impossible to hear them if there is any background noise, which there almost always is in a home or pet shop. They make a 'purring' sound, maybe to communicate with each other.

Another strange fact about plecos is that some of them, mostly the Panaque species, eat mostly wood from trees which have fallen in the river. They have spoon-shaped teeth to remove the surface layer of wood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Panaque_teeth.jpg
 
You say it's ugly, but look at his eyes! Looks like a noble soul prisoned in that body.
520
 
Last edited:
Maybe a magician turned someone into a fish. :D

Some plecos looking like window decorations...
 

Attachments

  • 2006_1003nilamsphotos0018.JPG
    2006_1003nilamsphotos0018.JPG
    42.1 KB · Views: 125
  • 2006_1003nilamsphotos0017.JPG
    2006_1003nilamsphotos0017.JPG
    51.5 KB · Views: 117
naiad said:
...in a pet shop. I have never seen anything like it. I thought it must be deformed, but then I found some pictures of similar fish and it appears to be a normal species, Parancistrus.

It makes the stonefish and anglerfish look beautiful.

I am interested in all the armoured catfish, and I would like to keep some one day. That certainly looks like an interesting one.

Some more Parancistrus...
http://www.plecofanatics.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/12450/cat/520
http://www.plecofanatics.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/3284/cat/520
http://www.plecofanatics.com/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/520/page/1
http://www.plecofanatics.com/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/520/page/2

Lucia
Click to expand...

Fuzzy fins? I never imagined it. Great pecs, pleco!
DDeden
 
  • Like
Reactions: naiad
A lot of them have fuzzy fins, but those are the best I have seen. That is why they are being picked up and not caught in a net - the 'hairs' are hooked spines and they are very difficult to remove from a net.

In a recent fishkeeping magazine, there was an article about Flying Foxes (another algae eating fish). It said: "With its sandpaper skin, rolling eyes and fleshy, pulsating mouth, a large pleco is a heinous beast." rofl :waterwork

I think the Flying Fox is a better algae eater and community fish than most plecos, but they are surely not that bad?! They do have sandpaper skin, but nobody has to stroke them if they don't want to. Also makes them easier to catch as they are not slippery. Their eyes do roll downwards when they blink like a frog, but that looks cute. As for the 'fleshy, pulsating mouth', they can't open and close their mouth like other fish can, because it is a permanently open sucker, so it does pulsate when they are not stuck to something, but they can hardly be blamed for that.

They are one of my favourite fish because they are so cute and funny. :D

Now I am a member of...
http://www.plecofanatics.com/

Lucia
 
Pleco's are indeed endearing fish but a lot of the more common forms that are so often kept in home aquarium end up as unfortunate creatures.
Due to the fact they can reach a considerable size, very often out growing thier claustrophobic surroundings. Luckily some of the more respectful fish retailers will point this fact out to less knowledgeable fish keeper. However I have had to re home dozens of large Plecs to the extent of housing them in a indoor Koi pond! When the locale fish keeping community found out about our pond facility we were inundated with large Plecs to the extent 50+ fish in less than a year!
 
That is true. That's why I think the large ones should not be imported in large numbers, and they should only be sold to people who have a very large tank. They are interesting fish and most can be bred in captivity, but they are only for specialists. There is a big problem with shops selling small specimens of big fish, and then people buy them and they grow big.

Plecos are often sold as 'algae cleaners'. They are not particularly good at this, and many of them need specialised diets. They eat a surprising range of foods - wood (Panaque), dead fish (Hypancistrus), insects and worms, fruit, plants. They are also social, but single ones are sold as living vacuum-cleaners!

I would like to go diving in the indoor Pleco pond. Warm and full of fish! :D

Some fish not to buy unless you have a heated indoor chlorine-free swimming pool are:
Giant gourami
Redtail catfish
Big plecos
Tinfoil barbs

The biggest pleco I have ever seen, next to a diver...
[ame="http://www.plecofanatics.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11891"]Huge panaque in amazon - PlecoFanatics.com[/ame]
It has outgrown sticking to the side of a fish tank a long time ago. rofl

And their funny eating habits...
[ame="http://www.plecofanatics.com/forum/showthread.php?p=251527"]December Caption Of The Month Contest - PlecoFanatics.com[/ame]
 
Last edited:
The eyes belonging to the one in the first post (the one being picked up out of the bucket) looks like those plastic googly eyes you can get in packets and stick them on eggs for christmas decorations etc etc :p
 
naiad said:
A lot of them have fuzzy fins, but those are the best I have seen. That is why they are being picked up and not caught in a net - the 'hairs' are hooked spines and they are very difficult to remove from a net.
Lucia
Click to expand...

Maybe change the name from pleco to velcro fish? Can you get the fish by using the soft side of velcro to attach? Maybe hard to get it off though.:confused:

I was surprised to find out about the underwater backfloaters, I wondered if any fish did that, unusual since the air bladder is upside down then (I think). Backfloating (or backwimming) seems to be very rare in nature.

DDeden
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
DeeperBlue.com - The Worlds Largest Community Dedicated To Freediving, Scuba Diving and Spearfishing

ABOUT US

ISSN 1469-865X | Copyright © 1996 - 2024 deeperblue.net limited.

DeeperBlue.com is the World's Largest Community dedicated to Freediving, Scuba Diving, Ocean Advocacy and Diving Travel.

We've been dedicated to bringing you the freshest news, features and discussions from around the underwater world since 1996.

ADVERT

Community platform by XenForo® © 2010-2023 XenForo Ltd.
Top Bottom
Back