Moribund plecos

probably starving ...

i feed my plecs .... mine love blanched baby marrows. i half cook them so
they will sink all i do is buy couple of marrows .. peel them and cook them
for +- 10 min till they sink ...
strain the lot and chop them into 1" - 2" pieces .. freez the lot and
remember to seperate them when they start to freez otherwize they get to
hard to sepearate.
now all i do is every second night i drop a frozen cube in each of my tanks
...
the plecs love the stuph...

you could try cucumber, carrots(blanced), pumpkins(blanched) or just about
any veg that sinks
Remember a fish that size will need more food than the algae can supply.

most of the other stuph you mentiond will probably kill all your fish ....

"Big Dummy" wrote in message
. net...
I notice I have a really high death rate of plecos. I keep cichlids,
usually moderatley aggressive south americans, haps and peacocks. I have
several tanks. I try to keep at least one pleco in each tank to eat the
algae. I have a problem though in that they are always dying
mysteriously,
particularly the small ones. I keep enough of an eye on them to know it's
not ich and the cichlids pretty much leave them alone, so it's not
persecution or being eaten or ripped apart (at least, very rarely)

They always seem to survive once they get about 4" -5" long, but until
that
point, it seems like about a 60% death rate, compared to maybe 2% for
other
new fish. What give here? Are they starving? Eating too many toxins?
Don't like water quality, hardnesss, temperature?

Any advice would be appreciated.

BD