Well, the more you feed your pl*co, the bigger it will get. If you let it
forage for itself it may grow as little as an inch a year (as well as
keeping your tank clean). And ottos will damage plants, too - mine leave
holes in the swords and hygrophila corymbosa leaves.

kush

Robert Flory wrote in message
gy.com...
I feed my pleco Nutrafin complete food tablets and shrimp pellets, he's
never eaten any plants and hasn't plowed up plants since I started placing
small rocks around them. My problem is that he has gone from 3.5 inches
to
8 inches in six months. Fortunately, I just got a 55 gallon tank. Maybe
you need to find something the pleco would rather eat or switch to ottos.

My ottos and brand new rubber nose plecos love the pellets too.

Bob

"kush" wrote in message
...
I have two six inch pl*cos in my 75 gallon. They eat half of every
single
new leaf on my anubias as it comes out. Other than that, they do such
an
excellent job on the algae and debris, that I have to tolerate their
occasional naughtiness.

kush

Rob M. wrote in message
...
I am planning to try to move into the planted aquarium world.
(slowly).
I
have a couple beginning questions. I have a nice thick layer of fine
gravel, so I don't want to dig it out and throw it away and replace
with
flourite, which might be ideal. Is realistically possible to add
laterite
to my gravel? I know it is suppose to be on the bottom layer. Can I
do
that without emptying my entire tank?

My other question is can you have a planted tank with a large (not
giant)
common pleco? They tend to plow things over. It is a 55 gallon tank.

Thanks for you experiences.
Rob