I have a common that is about 8 inches. As my del swam underneath it the pleco sucked on his tail a bit and the bichir just swam away. I've seen this happen 2x. If the del can swim away everytime should I still be worried? I dont want to have to sell my pleco.
Pleco sucking on bichir
- Thread starter antimony
- Start date
it can remove the slime coat of the bichir and cause serious problems from there. watch it a lot and if it keeps happening get rid of the pleco.
smpage;982740; said:
ha, get rid of the bichir
What you feeding your pleco. One cause of plecos sucking on other fish slime coat is due to it not having enough protein. However it is very common for this to happen, which is why people tend to say don't keep plecos with bichirs... for this reason. The depletion of the slime coat can cause your bichir serious problems and can often lead to death. If you see it much more, I'd seperate them immediately, you won't ever be able to stop the pleco from doing it.
my pleco kept trying to latch to the side of my clown knife, after seeing him do it about 10 times out the door went the pleco.
SLIMECOAT
Is a mucous created by the continal replacement of glandular cells know in the fishes skin that produce a glycoprotein which is called mucin. This when mixed with water forms the mucus that makes up the slime coat of fish.Fish with poorly developed scales tend to produce more of this slime coat.. The slime coat does threee basci things- it reduces turbulence for the fish when swimming by smoothing over the areas between the fishes scales-it helps regulate the internal/external ionic balance and the efficiency of gases exchanged through the skins surface-ie-osmoregullation and it provides a slipery surface that in it's sloughing off prevents bacteria from attching themselves to the skin. Bacteria is simply washed away from the skin with this process. It also aids in acting as a wound bandage.Stressed fish have a change in their slime coat-either too much or too little.One sign of a stressed bichir is usually overproduction of its slimecoat.
One has to remember that in the areas of the amazon where a number of plecos exist there is little in the line of protein based foods. Aquatic insects and small inverts do not do well in the heavy current. Plecs are very adaptable to feeding on availiable food sources and one is the mucus coating of other fish. There is good anacdotal evidence of these fish doing this in the wild and plenty of evidence of these fish doing this in captivity. The closest taxonomic relitives of Loricariidae are the Trichomycteridae. There are several mucus feeding only trichomycterid catfishes. It really would not be a suprise to find that mucus feeding is a common feeding method in many Loricariidae catfishes. These fish are really not obligate herbivores.
The real problem is the rasping teeth delaminating the bichirs scales leaving it open to some serious infections that can be hard and costly to cure-Anne
Is a mucous created by the continal replacement of glandular cells know in the fishes skin that produce a glycoprotein which is called mucin. This when mixed with water forms the mucus that makes up the slime coat of fish.Fish with poorly developed scales tend to produce more of this slime coat.. The slime coat does threee basci things- it reduces turbulence for the fish when swimming by smoothing over the areas between the fishes scales-it helps regulate the internal/external ionic balance and the efficiency of gases exchanged through the skins surface-ie-osmoregullation and it provides a slipery surface that in it's sloughing off prevents bacteria from attching themselves to the skin. Bacteria is simply washed away from the skin with this process. It also aids in acting as a wound bandage.Stressed fish have a change in their slime coat-either too much or too little.One sign of a stressed bichir is usually overproduction of its slimecoat.
One has to remember that in the areas of the amazon where a number of plecos exist there is little in the line of protein based foods. Aquatic insects and small inverts do not do well in the heavy current. Plecs are very adaptable to feeding on availiable food sources and one is the mucus coating of other fish. There is good anacdotal evidence of these fish doing this in the wild and plenty of evidence of these fish doing this in captivity. The closest taxonomic relitives of Loricariidae are the Trichomycteridae. There are several mucus feeding only trichomycterid catfishes. It really would not be a suprise to find that mucus feeding is a common feeding method in many Loricariidae catfishes. These fish are really not obligate herbivores.
The real problem is the rasping teeth delaminating the bichirs scales leaving it open to some serious infections that can be hard and costly to cure-Anne