Topic: Golden pleco

[Eric]

lmao, i guess i'm in need of some new glasses! didnt even see the knife in the background untill Ivan spotted it!

[toyota]

me neither 

[Luke]

tracey how big is your clown knife he/she looks pretty big in the picture

[toyota]

it must be huge if that is an 11" pleco 

[tracey]

He's somewhere around 18" now, its kinda hard to measure him since he only comes out when the lights are low.  So he's got some growing to do..........

[Luke]

from what i read they can reach 3 feet in the wild. is that true??
so even in captivity it still should have growing to do

[toyota]

So he's got some growing to do..........

i thought he would be bigger, but if he is that size he certainly does have some growing,,are they as slow growers as black ghost knifes

[tracey]

Actually, they can get a little bigger than 3 feet, often up to 40" in the wild.  In aquariums, they usually don't get much past 24 to 30".  He's a little on the stunted side, due to not ideal conditions while he was younger, before we got him a couple of years ago.  The guy that brought him into the lfs was hoping that someone with a better size tank would be ale to take him on and give him a chance to be all that he could be.  He never got any info about him when he first purchased him, so didn't realise just how big he was gonna get.  But he has grown around 6 or 7" in the two years that we have had him, so while he doesn't grow quite as fast as a cichlid, he's no slouch in that department either