Poor Pleco all beat up

**twisted01976** · 03-29-2012, 04:55 AM

JD's guarding babies can be rather vicious can't they? I came home tonight to find my Pleco, which is more than double the size of them, beat up and very pale. He is usually very dark and I found him almost tan. He went back to the 75. Now I have a 125 with 2 JD's and a bunch of fry and nothing else. Not exactly what I had envisioned for a 125 gallon tank. Once the fry get a little bigger they are coming out. Hopefully by then the 3 Salvini I have in the 75 will be big enough and my Pleco healed up so they can all go into the 125. It will most definitely be getting a re-scape at that time. You read about fish being aggressive but never truly realize what aggressive can be until you see it first hand. Well, I guess I did ask for all of this by deciding to start keeping cichlids.

**Lady Hobbs** · 03-29-2012, 04:59 AM

Aggression can certainly ruin things and you feel bad when something is trapped and has no where to go to get away from the onslaught. You might have to break up that mated pair and put one of them in the 75. Or both and move the others to the 125.

**ScottishFish** · 03-29-2012, 07:14 AM

Yup I've heard jds can be terrors. A 125g for two fish kinda sucks too, I'd do as LH advises and split them or let them wreak havoc in the 75g themselves

**twisted01976** · 03-30-2012, 04:06 AM

The funny part of this is that I had originally bought 3 JD's, but when I got home I realized that one of them looked different. I started looking around figured out I had ended up with 2 JD's and a Firemouth. Unfortunately the Firemouth died. So, some how I ended up with a male and a female JD and only bought 2 of them. What are the odds? If breaking them up is what it takes then I may do that. It probably wouldn't have been so bad but they decided to lay the eggs smack in the middle of the tank. That is why I need to do some re-scaping, soon!