How sensitive are Pseudos to hard alkaline water?

[crenicichla444]

So there's a nice L273 at a lfs I've been eye balling for around a year. My 300 is very slight brackish aka hard alkaline water I have a intermedia pbass (supposedly susceptible to hith and likes soft clean water) sds and had a orbignyi ray (gave to a friend recently) that are doing great.

Question is how would a pseudo pleco fare? This is no fresh wild caught this has been raised by a local for over a year from 2 inches. It's About 7-8 inches. eats everything. a bit nervous since this is not a low end fish and I've been told that they are sensitive to ph... However I've also been told that a lot of other fish are sensitive to ph and won't fully thrive when really as long as the water is clean and oxygenated and theyre fed properly they do perfectly fine... lmk any first hand experiences? Thanks

 

[PseudaSmart]

You have a lot of questions and discussion points in a small space. The comments and suggestions to follow are in no particular order.
You say your water is brackish / hard alkaline water. What does a test tell you? Brackish means there is salt. Hard means there is calcium and magnesium. Alkaline covers a large range of elements and compounds. What is the ph? Ph is the ratio of H+ to OH- ions. Understanding water parameters cannot be a mystery when keeping higher end fish.

Adapting to environment has everything to do with size. The larger the more tolerant to quick changes.
A fish can go from soft and/or low ph to harder and/or higher ph much easier then the reverse.
Growth rates and color for pseudacanthicus worsens the direction you want to go.
Do you really want to take a sled dog and make it live in the Amazon?

 

[Warborg]

My advice is not to put any pleco in a brackish tank.

 

[MoNsTeR FiS]

I had an african cichlid tank with a L600, a L97, a L014, and many other plecos and they great in hard alkaline water and when 3/4 of my total stock died because of a unidentified disease i used freshwater aquarium salt and all of the plecos continued to thrive in the hard alkaline water with salt. I could not measure salinity because i had a drip system to flush the parasites or whatever it was out of my tank but i did re-dose salt daily. The plecos showed no difference in the hard alkaline water than the tank they are currently in now with soft acidic water, but did seem to breathe rapidly with less nitrate in hard alkaline water than soft acidic. In my experience the plecos seem to be very hardy in all types of water.

 

[crenicichla444]

In regards to "brackish" all my fw tanks are brackish I add instant ocean for ich treatment and it promotes health in my fish I believe. It also raises hardness of the water and alkalinity ph is 8.1. As for keeping a sled dog in the Amazon isn't that what we're doing by keeping fish in aquariums in water from a diff continent?? But that's a discussion for a diff topic

As for not keeping plecos in brackish after doing a bit more asking around and stuff people have put actual salt in the water to treat plecos for ick and other yucky stuff so I guess I figured it out. I appreciate the advice. I was however looking for a success or a failure story though like I asked for first hand experiences.

monster fis thanks for your input. Although aquarium salt and instant ocean are 2 diff things. However it is good to know