tophat665
Fish Fanatic
One of the joys of my bedroom is the Loach Motel, a 50 gallon breeder tank with five Botia kubotai, 2 regular and 2 xanthic Weather Loaches, a Nemacheilus masyai, 8 Red eye tetras as dither fish, and a 4" Male Bristlenosed Pleco. I never see the pleco and rarely see the B. kubotai.
It's well planted with Hygrophilia (2 types), Crypts, Bacopa carolinia, Cabomba carolinia, Nymphea stellata, Dwarf saggitaria, and slates covered with Java moss. All this under 220 watts of light with a magnum 350 and an eheim 2215. The hygro and cabomba were starting to look really ratty and at the same time growing into a real tangled mess and obscuring the driftwood I had in there, and the hair nets I had holding the java moss down were starting to rot through making it very hard to trim and clean. And the wife wanted her dresser back.
Long story short (too late), I took the opportunity to rescape the whole thing and get it moved to the other dresser.
In any case, I filled up a 30 gallon storage tub, threw in the flowerpots I was using for caves, and hooked up the eheim and the heater in the tub while I was taking everything down. Several hours later, the slates redone with a thinner layer of moss and fishing line, the driftwood turned into java fern trees, and the plants staged and ready to go, I removed the flowerpots from the tub. While I was doing this, I noticed that the pleco was stuck to the inside of one of the pots, and one of the B. kubotai had snuggled up under each of his pectorals. I released them all back into the tub, and damn if the pleco didn't stick to the side and three of the loaches tried to hide under his fins - a brief squabble ensuing until two were ensconced and one shot away to the corner. I tossed a big bunch of plants in as a hiding place and proceeded to finish up the 'scaping and planting on the tank.
Later, having half filled and planted, I chased off the cat and found that the pleco had moved, and the loaches with him. I started scooping fish into a half gallon mini tank to make the trip across the room, and again, the loaches shot right into the pleco's armpits, as it were.
So that's my story of strange behavior - loaches snuggling with a pleco. Pretty neat. Don't know if it means anything or not.
It's well planted with Hygrophilia (2 types), Crypts, Bacopa carolinia, Cabomba carolinia, Nymphea stellata, Dwarf saggitaria, and slates covered with Java moss. All this under 220 watts of light with a magnum 350 and an eheim 2215. The hygro and cabomba were starting to look really ratty and at the same time growing into a real tangled mess and obscuring the driftwood I had in there, and the hair nets I had holding the java moss down were starting to rot through making it very hard to trim and clean. And the wife wanted her dresser back.
Long story short (too late), I took the opportunity to rescape the whole thing and get it moved to the other dresser.
In any case, I filled up a 30 gallon storage tub, threw in the flowerpots I was using for caves, and hooked up the eheim and the heater in the tub while I was taking everything down. Several hours later, the slates redone with a thinner layer of moss and fishing line, the driftwood turned into java fern trees, and the plants staged and ready to go, I removed the flowerpots from the tub. While I was doing this, I noticed that the pleco was stuck to the inside of one of the pots, and one of the B. kubotai had snuggled up under each of his pectorals. I released them all back into the tub, and damn if the pleco didn't stick to the side and three of the loaches tried to hide under his fins - a brief squabble ensuing until two were ensconced and one shot away to the corner. I tossed a big bunch of plants in as a hiding place and proceeded to finish up the 'scaping and planting on the tank.
Later, having half filled and planted, I chased off the cat and found that the pleco had moved, and the loaches with him. I started scooping fish into a half gallon mini tank to make the trip across the room, and again, the loaches shot right into the pleco's armpits, as it were.
So that's my story of strange behavior - loaches snuggling with a pleco. Pretty neat. Don't know if it means anything or not.
