During my 20 years as a hobbyist I have never kept the Bushy nose pleco. In my first 15 years I really never kept any kind of pleco’s at all. It has been just recently that my interest in Loricarids has increased but I still never thought about keeping bushy nose, but that changed in July 1996.

About this time last year I started communicating with Ron Belliveau and some others that were planing a fish collecting trip to Peru in July of 96. You may have read his article in Aquarium Fish Magazine July’s issue about one of his previous trips to the Amazon. Well the timing was perfect, I had to go.

We went on the trip during the third week of July. Seven of us flew to Iquitos, Peru from Miami, the others were already at the camp that was setup in the jungle. We arrived at 11:00 p.m. Saturday night so we spent the night in town. We got up early Sunday morning so we could have a quick tour of the town before we left. The only way to get to the camp is by boat and this was a 5 hour ride in a speed boat down stream (it took us 7 hours coming back up stream).

The plan was to fish from Monday to Thursday and return to town on Friday and fly to Miami on Saturday. Every day we would go to different streams and ponds to fish, some would take us an hour by boat to get to. On Wednesday we went to a stream, about 15 minutes from camp, they called it Catfish Ally. When I heard this name I conjured up visions of us catching hundreds of corydoras. Well this wasn’t even close, I caught one cory. But I did manage to catch two adult bushy nose, a male and a female. Now that I’m thinking about it I did catch them in the same part of the stream, within ten feet of each other!

When I got them back to camp I was able to get a good look at them. The first thing I noticed was a cluster of spines they could stick out of each side of their head. This was going to be a problem trying to bring them home in plastic bags and they were going to be in the bags for close to three days. All I could do is triple bag them and hope for the best.

Friday morning we pact up all our stuff and headed back to town. We arrived in town around four p.m., the fish were taken to a fish exporter in town and we were off to check into the hotel. After diner we walked over to the fish exporter where we had the opportunity to check our fish and to purchase any fish that we may not have caught on our trip like corys, discus and angles. As I suspected the bags the bushy nose were in had only enough water in them to keep them wet! I gave the exporters instructions to prepare my fish for the journey home, give all the bags oxygen and rebag the bushy nose.

I finally arrived home Sunday at midnight. I brought home a total of about 50 fish of various sizes and none of them have had a water change since Thursday morning. It took me about two hours to unpack all of the fish and to my surprise all of them survived the trip including the bushy nose who’s bags only had ½ inch of water in them!
The bushy nose were set up in a 55 gal. tank along with some pike cichlids, fire mouths and some corys. Their diet consisted mostly of algae discs. There was two pieces of drift wood in the tank that had hollowed out sections that they would hide in. Nothing changed until nine months later the male was on the outside of the drift wood and he was fanning one of his ventral fins. He stayed like this for two days. After he moved from that spot everything seemed normal. At first I thought that they had spawned but after he moved I could not find any babies. One night about a month later I was walking by the tank and there were four ¼ inch bushy nose babies on the glass. The fire mouths and the pike cichlids must have eaten all the other babies. In the next couple of days I managed to save only one baby. After a couple of weeks the bushy nose were moved to a 29 gallon tank with some driftwood. The temperature was kept at 79°F and the pH was at 7.0. Within two weeks they had spawned. This time I was able to pull out over 150 babies. The pair has spawned regularly from July to January with spawn sizes from 150 to 250. So if you are looking for something a little different I suggest you give them a try.