Will Plecos hibernate?

[medicblue]

My pleco is being weird. It lays in one spot for days unless we roust it with something. Then it will swim away but settle again. It doesn't seem to want to eat or anything. The tank is greening up again. Is it sick or did it clean everything up too well and need to wait for more. I was putting algae disks in daily and it was eating them but it just stopped.

[DBL TAP]

Check your water conditions. That would be the first cause.

[johnc]

They are just lazy, how does it look health wise? Is it skinny and its eyes are flat or sunk in? Try dropping in a piece of raw shrimp and checking on it a few hours after lights out. They usually go crazy for shrimp.

[SoCalBoo]

My $.02

There is a general rule of thumb I read on planetcatfish.com - the prettier a pleco, the worse of a janitor it is. The type of pleco really does matter as far as maintenance. And how much you feed it. A common pleco that is well fed with scoff at algae. Don't feed it for a while, and your tank will probably clear up.

Start with water quality. Also take a look at your temperature. Also take a look at night with a flashlight and see if it is moving. Many plecos are nocturnal and/or rather shy.

[johnc]

That is right boo,
a lot of the nicer ones don't even eat algae. But using plecos will not work because they produce a lot of waste. So while they may eat some algae they are going to produce a lot more fertilizer for the green. I think siamese algae eaters or octo cats might work better.

[SoCalBoo]

from the top of my head, known algae eaters in some capacity:

some shrimp
some plecos
flagfish
SAE
angels
panda garras

freshwater plants can be a great solution for algae. If your substrate does allow, look to floating (water lettuce, frogsbit, etc) or column plants (java moss) can thrive. A number of plants do fine barerooted, so you can stick them on drift wood, lace rock, pottery, etc. Anubias and lava fern come to mind.

Watch any sunlight that hits it...I have two tanks about 4 feet apart. One gets afternoon sun, one doesn't. No algae in one that doesn't get sun. Nasty thread algae in other, getting pretty infested. All other variables are roughly the same. Actually, I feed the sun tank less. Lesson learned..algae loves light, especially sun.

There was also a bit of research, albeit not super scientific, but Diana Walstadt (do google search with her name and 'planted tank'...I also have one of her books if you want to borrow it) found that replacing typical grow bulbs that grow in the 'daylight' spectrum (6,000s or so), with cool white bulbs, usually down around 3000 (what hydroponic retailers call 'bloom' bulbs...redish spectrum, I believe), will still get you very good growth, but reduce algae.

All things considered, for all algae other than thread, SAE and plants have been the best mode of attack. Thread algae, my flag fish did a very good job until he suicided out of the back of tank (had trouble explaining that to my 4 year old). Albino bushynose is the only pleco that I ever had that was a decent to good housekeeper, and I have had a few. My exotic plecos don't do anything, but will mow through a 1" slice of peeled cucumber over night.