Mr. Gardener wrote:
On Sat, 18 Mar 2006 01:55:44 GMT, "Rick"
wrote:

Just got home from work and of course checked out my tanks. I took a double
take when looking at my 29g, it looked a tad cloudy, not the norm. So I did
some looking around the rocks and found my Bristle Nose Pleco dead. Not just
dead, but his guts apparently eaten out. He's lived in this tank for over a
year with a Black Ghost and a "Snowflake" Eel, they have never seemed to
have any problems at all. It's like a kick in the head, I'm not happy.
Damn!!

OK. I think I have made a discovery after a good deal of
consideration, I am getting a strong suspicion about why our pl*cos
have been dying. When I first logged in to rafm, and read the FAQ, a
couple of decades ago, I learned that the common name for a certain
group of suckermouth catfishes should never be spelled with the letter
"e" in the middle. The "e" was always to be replaced with a "*", an
asterisk. Since I have returned, I've noticed that nearly all posters
here are ignoring that important factor in writing about their pl*cos.
I've lost two ancistrus, both with a round, red dot on their backs,
and I'm learning that this red dot is appearing on many ancistrus in
many fish stores and home aquariums across the continent, and I
haven't found anyone with a good explanation. Well, I retrieved the
corpse of my most recent dead ancistrus, and looked very closely at
the red dot, and you know what, it wasn't a dot, it was a red
asterisk. I think that our straying from posting convention has
finally caught up with us, or at least caught up with our pl*cos. It's
the only explanation that makes sense.

Ah, you have discovered the ancient Usenet pl*co curse. I can type
pleco with impunity as I don't have any. :-p

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