I notice that royal pleco on your avatar. Do you have one of those? I heard the area where they came from is now a dead zone and that they are near extinction. Back when I worked at pet shops they were very common and cost around 25 bucks. What is the deal with them now? Will

hey will, yep that is my royal in the avatar he is currently in my 120gal and is much bigger, i havent heard of the poss extinction of these guys as of yet but poss could be due to the over fishing and pleco craze going on now a days and i mean they are being over fished badly, i would like to breed these plecos but they can get pretty nasty towards each other and more than likely a male will kill off a female so carefull observation is a must, i also have a gold nugget in the same tank and he leaves the nugget alone, but i got this royal from ken at kyiana almost a year ago and he was a small pleco when i recieved him, these plecos are going to be right there with the zebras in no time at all but i havent checked on the availability in some time, i think ken was getting them in as wild caught specimens and you might be able to check with him or go thru tim and ask if he can still get them in, but cool so if it is true on the extinction i will have a pretty young royal pleco that i could breed one day, later..

I had heard that heavy mining had polluted the rivers where those guys lived and killed them off. I use to see lots of little ones available at pet stores 20 years ago but have not seen any for at least ten years. Of course, I don't go looking too often so I thought I would ask.
Under most circumstances I think that habitat destruction, degradation, and fragmentation do way more harm then collection for the pet trade, even if half the natives down there are turned loose to get critters!(LOL) Honestly though, I don't know about these royal plecos. Will

hey will dude you are so right about that destruction advice i have heard some one tell me that they built a dam and it was causing several problems with the plecos in the region but i would have to agree that destruction and over collecting is the problem..