I Google's it but couldn't find a straight answer. I have a planted tank. The plants don't allow algae to grow. They are greedy and take up all the nutrients. The tank is by a window and I have like 300 Watts worth of light. I can't get algae to grow at all thanks to my.plants and snails. My ottos appear to eat the plants but ive never seen the Pleco eating them. The pleco is growing and appears healthy I think, so it must be finding food somewhere. I considered growing some extra algae outside on something and putting in the tank. Is this necessary? Can pleco survive on non algae vegetation Sent from my LG-E739 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
Algae should be the main food source, but I have seen them scavange for waste in the rocks. You can buy algae disks to supliment if your tank wont support natural growth.
Thanks. That was what I was wondering. I wasnt sure if it was algae specific or just plants in general. I did find something that said common plecos eat.plants but most others don't I think mine is a brsitlnose Sent from my LG-E739 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
They like algae wafers (heard good things about hikari brand) and fresh veggies like cucumber, zuchini and lettuce. Might like the occasional sinking shrimp pellet.
I fed mine sushi seaweed. It's unsalted and no oil so safe for water chemistry. I used to do algae wafers too, I had a few royal plecos and bristlenose, but seaweed is much cheaper and they loved the stuff and got huge.
Did algae grow in your tank? Or did they mainly eat the seaweed? Sent from my LG-E739 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
I usually only kept pleco in my predatory tank, there was algae but they never ate it. They would either eat the seaweed or pellets I threw in for predators. My royals were kept in a white sand bottom tank, no algae, but they only ate wafers and seaweed. Usually my tanks were heavily planted except predatory tanks, as they uproot everything. I considered an UV sterilizer but water changes keep it down. I actually hate plecos, especially the common ones, they grow so large and produce so much waste. I did have a 12" common or sailfin that would swim upside down at the surface and wait for me to drop a pellet in its open mouth. Once I did, he'd suck on the pellet like a jaw breaker for hours lol.
But to answer your question, plecos have suction cupped mouths not because they like to browse glass walls for algae, but they usually live in rapid moving water and it provided grip on stone and wood to prevent being washed away in current. I believe natural driftwood that has some algae colonies established is a good source if seaewd.or wafers isn't cutting it.
Interesting Well I installed. Co2 infuser and siddnelty got algae so I'm not worried Sent from my LG-E739 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
Ah cool, I messed with co2 once, but had a breakout, I think my yeast mixture wasn't proper haha. It was DIY. I was sad, had some nice crystal shrimp colony.
You need to run a second tube into a second bottle (underwater) It filters out the solids from the yeast culture just like a bong Sent from my LG-E739 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
Yeah that was about 10 years ago! Now, my roommate does aquariums, mostly cichlids. I was into felony fish and turtles, there's only 1 fresh wwater aquatic turtle in the world, adorable as fuck, but I used tto have 1.