Flash Plecos...

[fish-rookie]

Hi all,

My ongoing fish project is approaching the end of the construction stage and I'm getting ready to add my fish of choice - Flash pleco's but locating them is proving tricky and/or expensive.

I am looking to get four or five in a species only tank and I have seen them online for anywhere between £18-£30 but always 'out of stock'. I have been to dozens of LFSs in a 25 mile radius and nothing but then the other day... My local LFS got some in from nowhere! at a cost of £45 each! And to be honest, although I'm NOT an expert they didn't look like the healthiest looking plecos I've seen.

Does anyone know of anywhere in the Gloucestershire/Oxfordshire/Wiltshire sort of areas that stocks them and has a good reputation? Has anyone successfully bought them online and if so from where?

Any help at all you can give me would be fantastic!

Cheers,
FR

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If anyone's interested the project in basic terms is:

Converted concrete outshed with DIY added mains power. I've insulated the walls and built a sturdy framework for the shelves on which the tanks will sit. Underneath is a 200L sump tank that used to be a water tank from an attic (black plastic so hopefully no light means no algae). I'm using an old outdoor water feature pump attached to some tubing to pump water from the sump to the first 120L tank at high speed to simulate a river run. Bogwood and the odd rock in that tank arranged along the 'river run' theme. I have built up around the top of the tank a 1 1/2 inch rim with acrylic in which an outflow pipe is seated so as the tank fills to the top the excess water overflows into the pipe and then into the next tank in the system, and so on... back to the sump tank. The idea being one pump moves all the water in several tanks.

The overflow water is fed back into the sump tank and into a DIY version of a juwel column filter system before it flows out the bottom into the rest of the sump, there is also loads of other filter media in the sump - this is a very well filtered system. To avoid ph changes (and just to grow them for my indoor community tank which needs an endless supply) I have one tank in the system that is covered from outside light and has a light on a timer through the night i.e. its 12hours out of sink with the sun!

I want to see just how well I can keep certain types of fish - as I said I want Flash's for the main tank. If they do well I'd eventually love to breed them and the other tanks could be used as creches and development tanks. Plus other species maybe? Who knows...

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Wait until the lfs has had the plecos for a week or so before taking another look at them when they settled down a bit more and had something to eat, some pleco's can spend a rather long time in transport so its not surpising if they look a bit stressed and under weight after they have just arrived in the petshop .
What exactly didn't look right about the pleco's anyway?

 

[fish-rookie]

What exactly didn't look right about the pleco's anyway?

I have seen other flash's but these were a lot paler, almost washed-out looking. I know that's a sign of stress in other fish but I suppose that could be down to the move as you say. They were in a tank of cherry barbs which kept swimming in front of the glass where I was looking so slightly hard to see. In between the lines they had very slight grey patches in the black colouring, about a cm across that looked a little odd. It gave them a mottled look. As I said I'm not an expert!

There was also a half eaten cherry barb corpse which is never a good sign as far as I'm concerned and when I asked the LFS chap if I could get a closer look at the flash he attempted to satisfy the request by trying to catch it with his hand for about 2 mins before giving up when it swam close to the front looking very stressed indeed.

The guy I was speaking to who is some sort of manager (it was him I had to see to arrange selling them my swordtail fry) and couldn't tell me where they came from - as in were they caught wild and imported or bred in captivity. Not a major point but it just added to the growing lack of confidence I had developed.

I'll go back in a week as you said and see if they look any better, still miffed about the price though, especially when online companies are selling them for £30 delivered - if they ever get any in stock!

 

[jourdy288]

What exactly didn't look right about the pleco's anyway?

I'll go back in a week as you said and see if they look any better, still miffed about the price though, especially when online companies are selling them for £30 delivered - if they ever get any in stock!

Online companies out of stock? perhaps they have the "E-Mail Me" option. But, remember, you need to grab them ASAP. While I have never heard of flash plecos until now, I would advise waiting if you are to buy them from an LFS.