Huh. I have two four inch clowns, and another smaller one. I have never
seen thse guys do anything destructive to my plants. What type of behaviour
have you observed? -

When they were small, they left the plants alone. And when I move them to a
new tank, they leave the plants alone for the first few months. After that,
they start chowing down like there's no tomorrow...no matter how much I feed
them.

They even chew on plants that are supposed to taste bitter, like anubias. My
feeling is that they do it as much for entertainment as anything. As I've
said, they are intelligent fish, and get bored in the same old tank after
awhile.

I've watched them punch holes in leaves, chew long "tracks" in them, cut leaves
off at the stem so I find them floating at the top of the tank, etc. They've
totally denuded Hygro, until there were only bare stems left, and turned
anubias leaves into lace.

Here's a scan of a crypt leaf I found floating at the top of the tank, courtesy
of the resident botias:

http://members.aol.com/leighmo/plant.jpg

My solution was to put the critters in a high-tech tank where the plants grow
fast enough that the damage isn't too noticeable. There are a few holes in the
sword leaves, but in general, they seem to prefer Hygro, and it grows fast
enough in this tank that they aren't too destructive.

And it's not just me. If you search Deja/Google, you'll find a lot of loach
keepers complaining about holes in their leaves. Often, they don't suspect the
loaches at first. Because loaches generally take awhile to start eating
plants, and they either hide or come to the front of the tank to beg when you
approach. But if you watch them from around a corner or something, so they
can't see you, you may catch them in the act.


Leigh

http://www.fortunecity.com/lavender/halloween/881/