Blue-eyed plec

The blue-eyed plec, Panaque cochliodon, is a herbivorous freshwater armored catfish endemic to Colombia where it occurs in the Cauca and Magdalena River basins.[2] This species grows to 16 inches. It is closely related to the popular plecostomus catfish kept in many aquaria as an algae eater, but is immediately distinguished by being dark grey to black and having bright, turquoise coloured eyes. Like other species of the Panaque genus, P. cochliodon feeds primarily on submerged wood.[3] Blue-eyed plecs grow to about 30 cm in length, and like other Panaque spp., they are clumsy swimmers adapted to staying close the substrate, in particular using the sucker-like mouth to hold on to submerged rocks and wood.

Blue-eyed plec
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Siluriformes
Family: Loricariidae
Genus: Panaque
Species:
P. cochliodon
Binomial name
Panaque cochliodon
(Steindachner, 1879)

Blue-eye plecs as aquarium fish

Blue-eyed plecs have been kept as aquarium fish, and were fairly popular during the 1980s and early 1990s. However, they are now very rarely traded because wild fish can only be obtained from rivers in Colombia considered to be outside the control of the Colombian government.[4]

References
  1. "Panaque cochliodon". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
  2. Froese, Rainer; Pauly, Daniel (eds.) (2011). "Panaque cochliodon" in FishBase. December 2011 version.
  3. "Panaque respirometry paper". February 22, 2006. Archived from the original on 22 February 2006.
  4. "PlanetCatfish • Home of Aquarium Catfishes". www.planetcatfish.com.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.