Tropical Fish Forums

[dreamingheart]

"I feed fish!"

Yep. I heard this last night from my excited four year old twin daughters as they raced down the upstairs steps, their hands coated in fish flakes, big smiles on their faces.

Problem is? I don't technically have a fish who requires "being fed." (I have a plecostomus.) Due to warmth and sunshine and tank conditions, he seems always to have a generous amount of algae, and I have witnessed him eating it. (Or at least, I've seen him adhere to it, and it's gone later.) I don't supplement his diet, although every few days, I do check to make sure there's algae on the glass. If there isn't, I put a pinch of his food into the tank.

Upon discovering his home polluted with an entire jar of food, I removed him by net and put him in a large plastic storage bin. He is acting healthily - at the bottom, moves when someone walks by, does not swim in aimless circles, has clear eyes and undamaged fins and body).

Here are my questions:

-How long can he remain, safely, in the plastic bin while my (tiny, 20 gal) tank clears up?

-How should I feed and care for him in this new bin? I treated the water with AquaSafe before he went in, but that's the only thing I did. A little of the polluting food went into the water with him, and he currently has a heater.

-How long can I expect it to take for my tank to clear, and how can I speed this up?

Thank you for any advice you might have: I'm fond of my fish after six years plus, and I would not like to lose him because his more ideal conditions were polluted and I've never had to do more than partial water changes and gravel cleaning before!

[unissuh]

A couple of large water changes in the old tank (80%+) making sure to thoroughly vacuum the gravel and any food you can see lying around will go a long way. I would have probably done this, left the fish in the tank and made sure to monitor water parameters just incase I didn't clean out enough food with the vacuuming. Squeeze in an additional water change a day for the next couple of days and all would probably have been fine.

I wouldn't keep him in the bin too long, there is no filtration in there so waste will be building up without being processed. If you are going to keep in him there, transfer the filter across as well as the heater as this houses the bacteria that break down waste.
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Fishing in the Rivers of Light

[ant1]

as above I would have vac't the food out,done a partial water change and left him in the tank.

[bignellm]

My Pleco seemed very hardy. He was in a 16 gal tank with some heavy polluter fish this last month (before I re-homed him) and never seemed starved or crowded. How big is this Pleco of yours?

As for the food in the tank, the other guy's recommendation would be more than adequate. Pleco's are Algae/Omnivorous/Scavengers, so even if some was eaten (depending on what it was) he/she would probably be OK.

Hope your Pleco is OK. They can be soo cool to watch

Here's a quick link to read up on Common Pleco:
http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/pleco/common.php