bristlenose eating swords

customdrum

customdrum

GOT PLANTS?
May 2, 2008
473
0
0
south carolina
i have 2 bristlenose plecos around 2.5" that are eating the new leaves on my swords. there in a 29g with 13 pepper corys and 11 brass tetras so maybe there not getting alot of food, i feed every day flakes and every day or 2 with algae wafers. the tetras will be moved soon so only the plecos and corys will be in there.
i have read that plecos will eat new sword leaves but never seen it myself till now. maybe i need to feed more often? i feed frozen blood worms and cucumber every 6-10 days to.
 
Even my non-veggie fish get zucchini or romaine 2-3 days a week. I don't know if my BN will get much now he's in with loaches & SAEs, they're gluttons.
 
I alternate between a slice of cucumber/squash (I think thats what it is. It's a big green thing thats not a cucumber. In espanol its calavasa (sp?) which means pumpkin. But in spanish we have two uses for the word pumpkin. The big orange halloween ones, and the ones I'm feeding my plecos with) and an algae waffer.

Monday = veggies, Tuesday= waffer, wednesday= veggie, etc.

I see my plecos hanging on plant leaves, but they never eat the leaf. I'm gussing their getting to the algae that's beginning to grow.
 
My loaches ate (punched holes in) swords when the swords were iron deprived & used to hover over them in a threatening way if I was slow on veggoe feeding. They've trained me now.
 
Customdrum I've never had a bristlenose eat plants leaves. I don't keep swords but I have tons of plants in my pleco tank. I'm thinking the delicate new sword leaves are just getting rubbed through as they are sucking the biofilm and algae off of the leaves. I do feed zucchini at least 3 times a week. And although I feed mine twice a day and use veggie sticks, shrimp pellets, algae wagers and another mix pellet from Ken's, they get cranky with each other if I withhold zucchini from them longer than usual. They just don't eat the other foods the way they eat the zucchini. And I'm going through several whole zucchini's a week!
 
Never had my sword plants eaten by BN plecos either except the yoyo loaches. Your food menu seems inadequate. Need more green matter there.
 
I think from what I recall reading- Plecos go to eat the biofilm/algae off the leaves but because the leaves are fairly gentle end up destroying the swords.


cucumber/squash. (I think thats what it is. It's a big green thing thats not a cucumber.
Click to expand...

Hmmmm... Sounds like what we used to call a Marrow - depending on variety they can be anything from narrow like a cucumber to wide and ball shaped like a water melon. Patternwise and colourwise they look like cucumbers though.

I haven't seen any since I've moved to the US- lots of different squashes but not the common marrow we would have back home- but in New York you might have more variety to chose from.

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