File :-(, x, )
missing fish ohnoes Anonymous
Hello /an/,

I was looking in my 6 gallon fish tank this morning and to my dismay my Plecostomos was completly...missing. It didn't jump out and I don't see the body anywhere in my small tank. The only other things in there are a few tetra and some teeny snails that accidentally got in my tank with new fish.

Did it maybe die and the snails at the body? Or would tetra do that? A couple tetra died previously and their bodies were gone when I noticed I was missing a couple fish, and I thought it was the pleco.

Are my old tetra practicing sorcery and consuming other fish to remain alive?!?!?~??! Maybe I should post in /x/ instead....
>> good thing i spellcheck after posting Anonymous
^^Did it maybe die and the snails ATE the body
>> Anonymous
     File :-(, x)
GTFO and stop abusing fish by sticking them in a 6 gallon tank. DO YOUR FUCKING RESEARCH!
>> Anonymous
>>151634
What research? Rule of thumb: 1 gallon of water per inch of fish. Check. Tank is not overcrowded...check. Fish are fed regularly with fully functional filter. Check. Fish die when you have them in a tank that's been going for 4+ years with small tetra and an occasional pleco.
>> . Anonymous
Your common pleco(the one in the OP picture) gets up to 20 inches long! Its cruel to keep an animal that large in just a 20 gallon tank.

Just because you bought it when it was 4 inches long doesn't make it right to only stick it in 4 gallons. It stunts the fish, causes the organs to over grow and stress, eventually leading to a painful death.

I'm not attending college to learn how to kill fish by keeping them in poor conditions. An adult pleco MUST HAVE at least 50 gallons of water.

Its impossible to keep ammonia, nitrites, nitrites, Ph, and Kh in order on such a overcrowded tank. Thats most likely why your fish died.

Like I said. Do your research dip shit.
>> Anonymous
Oh noes the fishies ~
>> Anonymous
snails eat fish. but it would take snails a long time, so it has to be something else - unless you really weren't paying attention to your poor fish..

but plecos do jump.. maybe you just haven't found his body yet.
>> Anonymous
>>151637
That rule is to be used very loosely. Plecos create a LOT of waste, so they need more space.

That said, they can hide in the smallest of spaces. Check every nook and cranny of your ornaments and maybe inside the filter if it's in-tank.
>> Anonymous
while I too have heard the bit about plecos growing huge, I have yet to see one that started small when added to my tank get much bigger, even after a year, sure it grew a little but to get to that xbox size people always say must take ages
>> Anonymous
>>151673
You must take really shitty care of your fish. Mine got so huge I had to give him to a petstore within a year and a half.
>> Bitter Anon !!WJLRQ1cwCyZ
>>151677
I had a pleco that got to be 18 inches long. I don't have a clue how big the fish tank was in gallons/litres, but it was about 4' long. He was about 10 when he finally died.

I think it's safe to say that, with sufficient food, a pleco will grow as big as its environment can support, sometimes a bit bigger.
>> Anonymous
>>151677
nope, sorry, my fishies were nice and happy. Well taken care of, and excellently filtered water. Did you have a huge tank? Mine was 30 gallon. I've heard that fish with the potential to grow, will do so if given the room, but if not given excess room they don't grow so explosively. My pleco was probably 3 inches long when I got it and maybe barely doubled in size after a year.
>> Anonymous
>>151673
not OP, but even so I'm not keeping fish in unusually cruel conditions. I had 2 SMALL plecos (first one lived 3 or so years and died amongst a few tetra, as I have now, before I felt it was grossly overgrown. As far as pain goes I didn't ask it on the 0-10 scale).
The second pleco was small and less than a year old, and again, I'm not cruel to my fish and the tank is not overcrowded(I didn't stuff a 2 foot long pleco into a 6 gallon tank duurrr), I have access to an 80 gallon tank if the thing outgrows the tank to a point where I'm concerned. Could just be blending in with parts of the tank and I need to look some more.

I do pay attention to my fish as I feed them regularly as I've said. I'm not cruel, maybe just pre-emptive in drawing forum trolls.
>> Anonymous
>>151684
PS pic is from the internets...not my pleco (which is considerably smaller)
>> Anonymous
Last time a fish of mine went missing, it had found a way into a piece of decoration I didn't realize had holes in it big enough for the fish to swim into.

(In fact, it didn't have holes big enough for the fish to swim into. It had a hole about the size of a quarter near the bottom, and she was a three inch Oranda. I have no idea how she got in there.)

I had to pull the damn thing apart piece by piece underwater with pliers. Took over an hour. And the fish went from having one gimp fin (she came like that) to two and a bent side to her fan tail.

When this happened, I'd realized it happened once before, when she'd gone missing for a week in what I until then thought had been a practical joke (office fish tank, and a bunch of people needed to get me back for other pranks). That time, she reappears a bit skinnier than she had been, and slightly lumpy.

She was a special fish...

Anyway, the moral of the story is there are probably places to get stuck in your fish tank that you don't know about.