Beginner Community Pleco Tank. Advise please.

[Ap3kzz]

Hi all.
I went to my LFS last weekend and my 10 yo son pointed out to me a nice pleco, which the lfs stated zebra pleco (L46) and got him interested in starting a pleco tank. My understanding is that L46 isnt really meant for a beginner. As i browse thru tis site, it got me interested in keeping plecos as well.
So ive decided to set up a new 4x2x2 tank to house these plecos.
My question now is can i keep an assortment of hypans,pseudas and panaques in tis new tank.
Im plannin to get for my son a pair of L333s. Everything else is for me.
Advise please.

[Lycosid]

You might want to first verify that it's really a L46. At least around here those are really expensive fish that can be pretty hard to find, and because of that there are unscrupulous people who lie about the ID of the fish. Maybe it is a L46, but I'd double-check. I can't ID them (they are too expensive for me to bother looking at) but there are people here who could ID them from photos.

[bekateen]

Hi Ap3kzz,

Welcome to PlanetCatfish. I agree that if you consider the

L046

, you'd better make sure they're identified correctly. But you said you're thinking of something simpler, easier to take care of.

Some hypans are pretty easy to take care of, but one rule of thumb many people follow is to keep hypan species separate. There are cases where different species of hypans are housed together and they hybridize, producing offspring that are not true to either parent species. This is something we want to discourage for the sake of the species and preserving them. Another concern is that the the hypans are mostly smaller plecos, whereas pseudas and panaques get quite large. I'd advise you not to mix them. Finally, be aware that hypans and pseudas, if I understand correctly, are more carnivorous whereas panaques are wood-eaters. Giving too much meat to wood-eaters can upset their digestive systems. Personally, I probably wouldn't house them together.

Ideally, I'd encourage you to get species-only tanks for the hypans, in other words just one species of hypan per tank. If you can only have one aquarium, I'd advise you to get several of one species of hypan, and consider no more than one other hypan species, again getting several. That way, if they do get the urge to spawn, they will probably mate with their own kind. Better yet, get a different species from another genus: For example some other plecos you could consider are in Peckoltia (e.g.,

Peckoltia braueri

or

Peckoltia sabaji

) and some of the Panaqolus (

Panaqolus albivermis

,

Panaqolus albomaculatus

); although some Panaqolus are real wood eaters, these two are more omnivorous, and are about the same size as the hypans.

Cheers, Eric