Blue-eyed pleco

Panaque cochliodon

Also known as Blue-eyed plec

FreshwaterFish

Blue-eyed pleco (Panaque cochliodon) — Sini Merikallio from Helsinki, Finland · CC BY-SA 2.0

Care at a glance

Temperature: 73–82°F (23–28°C)
pH: 6.5–7.5
Adult size: 11.8 in (30 cm)
Minimum tank: 119 gal (450 L)
Temperament: Mostly peaceful
Social behavior: Solitary
Swim level: Bottom
Difficulty: Difficult
Breeding: No record
Rarity: Common
Origin: Cauca and Magdalena River basins, Colombia (South America)
Family: Loricariidae

Overview

Keep a single adult in a tank of 450 liters or larger, since they are territorial with other plecos and bottom-dwellers and best kept on their own unless the tank is very large with decor that breaks up sightlines. They are mostly peaceful toward mid and upper level community fish and stay on the bottom, coming out mostly at night. Hold the water at 23 to 28 C and a pH of 6.5 to 7.5. They are heavy waste producers, so over-filter the tank and do frequent large water changes. Alongside the constant supply of bogwood, offer sinking vegetable matter like zucchini and the occasional sinking pellet. They are sensitive to copper-based medications, so treat with care. As a large wild-caught catfish, never release one into local waterways and check your local rules, since big plecos are restricted in some regions.

In the wild

Blue-eyed plecos come from the Cauca and Magdalena River basins in Colombia, where they live among submerged wood and root tangles along the riverbed. Driftwood or bogwood is not decoration for this fish, it is mandatory, since they rasp and eat the wood itself and their gut relies on the microfauna that lives in it. Give a single adult a tank of at least 450 liters with plenty of floor space, more wide and deep than tall, and pack in several large pieces of bogwood. Keep the water at 23 to 28 C with a pH from 6.5 to 7.5, run dim lighting, and expect them to graze most soft plants, though Java fern is usually left alone.

Good to know

This is Panaque cochliodon, a wood-eating pleco in the family Loricariidae, traded as the true blue-eyed pleco. It reaches about 30 cm as a standard adult, with some captive fish pushing 40 to 45 cm over many years. Its spoon-shaped teeth are built to scrape wood, making it an obligate xylophage, one of the few fish that digests driftwood as a primary food. It has never been bred in captivity, so every fish in the trade is wild-caught.

Did you know

This fish actually eats wood for a living. Its teeth are shaped like little spoons that rasp the surface of driftwood, and it depends on the microorganisms living in its gut to break that wood down, much like a termite does. Take the bogwood away and you remove both its shelter and a core part of its diet.