hello! i'm new and i have a magical mystery pl*c

Mand · Post by **Mand** » 23 Sep 2003, 11:17

hiya i'm Mand and I have been searching all over to find out whether or not my pl*c is actually the david blaine of my aquarium, or whether he's supposed to do what i thought of as an unexpected trick...

he's an 8inch common or garden pl*c with the standard dark brown colouration.

however, he makes a dramatic colour change dependent on the background colour of whatever he's sitting on, and when that background is gravel, his fins and sides of his body go really light with traces of orange, with only his usual dark brown in patches along his back

is this supposed to happen??

cheers guys

Post by **Barbie** » 23 Sep 2003, 11:24

Sorry to say, that's definitely perfectly normal

Barbie

Yann · Post by **Yann** » 23 Sep 2003, 11:27

Hi!

Yeap it is normal, most catfish try to camouflage themselves in their environement by working on their coloration, on a dark ground, they ll turn dark and on light ground their color is also light... nothing to worry.
Cheers
Yann

Mand · Post by **Mand** » 23 Sep 2003, 11:31

cool - cheers for that, just thought i'd check with someone, you know, would hate to think he was ill or anything. he's an amazing creature

der Ingo · Post by **der Ingo** » 24 Sep 2003, 03:03

There's another example of that on the Catfish of the month for the gold nugget. There are two pictures and the first time I saw them, I could have sworn they were two different fish.

You may also notice that there are different color variations within the same species of plecos.