Pleco's with large, violent cichlid.

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Marc280106

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Mar 11, 2007
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Australia
I'm wondering if there would be a chance of adding some type of Pleco to my 120g, which houses my Red devil. My main concern is the way he eat's the crayfish. First he takes off the pincer's, spit's them out and nudges the cray around the tank for the day (as if torchering the poor little f**ker.) before sucking the meat from the shell that night. He really is a stone cold SOB. I guess my question is, are there any species of Pleco which is armored enough and/or would have half a chance of withstanding this type of punishment? Or would i be wasting my time considering this?

I recently added a handfull of small Tinfoil barb's as target's, yet they didn't last more than a few day's. I feel any target's would be out of the question, (As was suggested to me.) unless i fork out the $70 they're asking for some 8" specimen's.:nilly:

Here's a shot of the tank. Oh, and i really don't want to add any extra decor.

100_7622-1.jpg


Your advice is greatly appreciated.
 
I will also add. Up until recently i had a female housed on the other side of a divider, which was not really tolerated at all.
 
Marc,I've done it before with great success but then it's always a gamble.Especially when You have an established single speciman.I have seen RD's that wouldn't tolerate anything at all!GL mate!
 
Give it a go mate, ive had plecos in with RD's before.
 
I have just been doing a little browsing and seem's to me that a common Pleco may be the way to go. The profiles that i looked up suggest that these guy's will grow to somewhere between 12" - 16" and are fairly hardy. I also noticed that Roliva has a large common housed with his Umbee. Granted that tank is a lot larger, but i think these two coukd live together in this tank. I may just have to add another piece of driftwood for security. I'll be sure to let you all know how this little adventure ends.

I appreciate the votes of confidence.
 
As others have stated, it's hard to tell how your devil will take any tankmate. However, with a lot of larger cichlids, their aggression is somewhat limited to fish that have a similar body structure, or even similar coloration, ie. other cichlids. It's quite possible that he may ignore the pleco all together. Then again, he may just try to destroy it! Good luck!
 
Cichlids will generally ignore Plecos unless breeding. If you can get your hands on a reasonably sized Common Pleco or Gibbiceps you shouldn't have any real problems, although as fishluvr12 pointed out, a single specimen RD might prove otherwise.

It's a gamble but I'd be confident that it will all work out fine without much hassle, other than the huge increase in additional feces in your tank of course.

As for the decor, maybe another reasonable sized piece of driftwood.
 
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