Pleco camouflaging

[TracyUK]

Can or does a pleco camouflague themselves? My pleco seems to go 'patchy' at times then the next day he's back to normal. It seems like he is camouflaging himself. Do they do this?

[sergo]

i swear my clown plecos change colors (shades). they get lighter and darker.

[TracyUK]

Oooh, thank gawd mines not the only one! He's a leopard pleco and goes patchy. My partner swears there's something drastically wrong with him and panics, but I know full well he will go back to normal later. My partner had me thinking that maybe there was something wrong.

[cocoa_pleco]

my clown pleco changed color, but my old common ones sometimes got patchy, then were normal too. nothing was wrong with them

[A1cntrler]

Mine chane color quite a bit as well. I kept them on black gravel for a couple of years and they were a very dark black with no visible spots. Now as of a month ago they are in a tank that has brown/natural substrate and the ones that were black are now quite spotted and quite interesting to look at. The Albino Chocolate Pleco stayed about the same, but looks richer on the brown..

[Drumachine09]

Oh Yea? Well i put my pleco in a week and a half (i think) ago, and ive only seen him once. Hes really good at camoflageing/being a pansy.

[TracyUK]

Well I'm glad my pleccy is 'normal' then (if you can ever call pleccys 'normal!')

[Severus]

Yes, it is prefectly normal. My common plec does the same thing. He will get big patches on him and he looks sickly but i read up on it and it is normal

[Mdsuave13]

Hey tracyuk, how does your clown loach do by its lonesome? I have 4 of those, and they are probably the funniest acting fish i have ever seen. When i first got a clown loach, i got one, and it died within 2 weeks... ??

[Nick_Pavlovski]

My Bristlenose is chocolate brown with black splotches when he's among the dark brown gravel substrate, but then he's light sand with splotches of medium brown when he's on the white ceramic aquarium decoration.

So heck yeh, they change colour/shades!