Pleco decision...

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Wolf3101

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Apr 26, 2007
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My wife and I are Pleco fans but until reciently have kept only commons. I picked up a nice Royal at about 5" and he doing great. Anyway to get back to my question. We are taking some fish to a LFS (babys...) and they have 4 Plecos we are intrested in. unfortunatly we don't know a huge amount about them. Any information we can get before we leave for the shop would be appreciated.

The first is an 6" gold nugget...

The secound didn't have a name listed but looks a LOT like our royal except it had a diferant tail. The front part of the tail was transperant and the back half had 'flag' markings on it. it was only about 5" long.

The next was a jet black Pleco with goldish white spots about 6" that they called a midnight. (they have several of each by the way.)

The last was probubly the most stunning. An 8" all while pleco with heavy gold markings that they called a magnum gold nugget.

Prices were....75 for the GN and Midnight
Not listed for the strange royal he guessed 45
and 85 for the magnum

Any of these worth trading for...picking up...and do they need any special conditions we don't know about....

Come on Davo and Wyld...

And no I don't have pics....once again I forgot that my phone HAS a camera....
 
I would steer away from gold nuggets; they can be tricky to keep. Royals tend to have a clear area in the tail when young, which fills in as they age.

Planet Catfish and PlecoFanatics are your friends! I would post your question to one or both boards and see what they come up with. Good luck in making your choice.
 
I've already looked through all of the L listing pics and can't find anything like what they call a magnum GN. (I DO my own reasurce but time is short and I didn't come up with anything.) The only magnum I can find looks WAY differant. I already bumped the royal looking one from the list because we have a royal. Along with the standard GN. It's between the midnight and the Mag GN
 
Can you redescribe the two plecos you are still interested in? The midnight could be one of many. Snowball is the most likely. The magnum name, usually, is associated with the L047.
 
Larger GN with bigger spots and an orange colored tail and fins....the midnight is JET black,,,,covered with white spots and has VERY rough scales tipped with spikes.
 
You'd be alot better off it you could look at a site like Plecofanatics or Planetcatfish and give us some pictures to work with. Congrats on the royal!
 
I couldn't tell. They have two and both had thier fins clamped to thier bodies...the tiny spike thing was REALLY pronounced I wouldn't want to try netting one of them. The so called magnum dosnt look like what I came up with on line....this looked like a lighter...brighter....and larger...GN...almost white in fact with red tail and fins.
 
its so hard to ID plecos without pics... sometimes even with pics its difficult. especially L066, L333, L318 , L316, etc.... a lot of them look similar to each other when at a young age. even with gold nuggets, there are a few different ones and some get larger than others. best way to ID them is to get them from a reputable place that knows their plecos
 
The larger one was 8" (magnum) and the midnight was about 6...7" so nither one was small....anyway I'm not sure yet that the store wants to trade so it might not be an issue. If they do I'll pick one and post pictures. We have enough tanks to cover whatever it needs.
 
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