L200 & L128 Not Getting Along

[San O Fisher]

I have had my two plecs for about a month and a half now. My L128 is relentless chassing around my L200. My L200 is still eating & usually just goes to the opposite side the tank, but the L128 will persist at times. Is this normal? my L128 is about 5 inches & my L200 is about 4. They are both in a 4 ft long tank, water stats have never been better, & tanks mates is about 3+inch syno (got him at an inch and half less than a month ago!), 15 tetras assorted and 3 discuss! There is plenty of wood and plants, but the front of the tank is wide open.

any comments?

 

[simonas]

its normal for there to be some friction between the plecs ie teritorial skirmishes but not to get too violent. Mine all chase each other a little bit but noting tha twould worry me. are any of the fins getting frayed on the plecs?

My L200 and L128 live ok with each other. The L128 is the dominant one but they tend not to go near each other

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Thats the problem with a lot of pleco's, a lot of them are not that sociable with each other and a lot of how well they get on together depends on the individual personality of the pleco.
The only thing you can really do to help deter them from harassing each other is to re-arrange the decor in the tank, positioning large chunks of wood/rocks to cut up the viewpoint in the tank from all directions and to create at least 3 caves for the two plecos. If this doesn't work though it might be best to separate the pleco's completely by putting them in different tanks, because the main problem about them is that its the L128 thats the bully and this is unfortunately the larger growing of the two types of pleco's, so as time goes by its power and dominance over the L200 is likely to only increase.

 

[San O Fisher]

Cool deal, My buddy is shutting down one of his tanks so i am going to take out a large piece of wood & replace it w/another rock cave that splits into two, so that would mean there would be 4 caves & there is still 3 large pieces of wood for the plecs, plus I am getting rid of some small plants to make way for one large plant for the discuss to hide in. Hopefully this helps, I need to do something b/c my syno is almost the same size as my L200 & i bought him when he was the same size as the tail.

 

[Phoenixbaby]

my L128 used to bully my albino pleco big time, not very sociable are they lol