# My Pleco eat a Neon Tetra



## mtthorne

My pleco lives under a small boat, it has a hole in the side so you can look in and see him in there. I also have Neon Tetras in the tank. There was one tetra that for some reason decided it liked to hang out in the boat also. He has now vanished. I thought Plecos were nice and do their own thing fish, but I guess they are territorial when it comes to what they consider their personal home.


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## holly12

Plecos are usually very docile fish and don't kill other fish. You are right though, in that they are territorial. (I had to trade my pleco in because she was constantly attacking my dwarf frogs because she didn't like them in her space). 

She may not have directly killed the Neon, but it may have been stressed from her 'territorial attacks' and then died. Plecos are opportunist feeders and will eat dead fish. It probably ate it after it was dead.

Sorry about your fish.  I hope the other Neon's stay away from the boat.


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## Rohkey

Pleco's are awesome, and I don't think they would attack a live fish with aims to kill it unless absolutely starving (unless it was another male plec maybe). The above poster is right, it's more likely the Neon died of stress/natural causes/other fish and the Pleco saw the opportunity to feast on it. If there is no evidence the Pleco was involved you probably shouldn't assume the worst. I had an extremely overstocked tank when I was little (cant remember if it was 10 or 20g now) with 2 5 inch long Plecos, a 3 inch long pleco, and probably 10-15 community fish and never had a single Pleco show any signs of aggression, even towards each other. Sometimes the little one would even latch itself onto the back of one of the bigger ones to eat (probably a sign of starvation, which I didn't know when I was a kid unfortunately) and the bigger ones never took exception to this. Maybe I had all females or 1 male, 2 females...but still, they are generally docile unless their territory is threatened, and it's hard to see the Neon being too big of a threat.

How large is the tank, how big is the plec, and how many other fish are there?


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