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Best plants that BN plecos won't eat

Fish4dawin

Fish4dawin

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Hi there people of TFF, hope you are all well. I'm trying to go with a planted tank in my 33 gallon, and recently picked up some driftwood and I believe it had anubias or something on it. Whatever plant it was, it has lost half of it's leaves because pf the BN's. What plants can I get that the BN's will leave alone?
 
My BN grazes the algae on my Anubias but doesn't eat any leaves. My anubias are well established for a few years now. Perhaps if your anubias are very small, that may be a factor. Or perhaps it's a different plant altogether. Post a pic of the plant.

Do you feed your BN pleco any special food? I drop an algae wafer in my tank every 2nd or 3rd day to supplement his diet.
 
I have a heavily planted tank with a lot of different plants. One of them is anubius and amazon swords together with 3 other species. I noticed that sometimes the pleco rest on the leaves but nothing more. They will eat the algae of the leaves but in my experience they will mostly chill around driftwood or on the glass.
 
Fishmanic said:
My BN grazes the algae on my Anubias but doesn't eat any leaves. My anubias are well established for a few years now. Perhaps if your anubias are very small, that may be a factor. Or perhaps it's a different plant altogether. Post a pic of the plant.

Do you feed your BN pleco any special food? I drop an algae wafer in my tank every 2nd or 3rd day to supplement his diet.
Click to expand...
I drop in 2 cory wafers each day, mainly for my ruby shark and my panda corys, but my BN's do graze on them.

I'll post a picture now but it'll be hard to see because the light is off.

Edit: I dose the tank once a week with Leaf Zone.
 
Here’s a picture, it’s quite hard to see but if you look closely you can see the holes in a few of the leaves.
 

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I don't think the bp are the cause for that. if the rest of the plant is healthy the leave could be old and dying. Then the bp MIGHT eat dying plat leaves just like the snails do.
 
That looks more like a java fern not an anubias.

Is it planted in the substrate? It's hard to tell from the photo. If it is, you need to unplant it and attach it to some decor. The rhizome (the thick thing that the leaves grow out of) will rot if it's under the substrate. That's for both anubias and java fern.
 
Agree with nik_n, I don't think those leaves are being eaten...looks more like nutrient deficiency, IMO
 
Fish4dawin said:
Hi there people of TFF, hope you are all well. I'm trying to go with a planted tank in my 33 gallon, and recently picked up some driftwood and I believe it had anubias or something on it. Whatever plant it was, it has lost half of it's leaves because pf the BN's. What plants can I get that the BN's will leave alone?
Click to expand...
Bristlenose plecos aren't known to eat live plants unless they aren't getting enough food. It sounds like they're getting enough food, so I wouldn't blame the plecos. Melting can happen with new plants, and nutrient deficiencies can cause small holes in the leaves and dying plants. Specifically, it looks like your plants are suffering from potassium deficiency. To fix this issue, all you need is some aquarium safe liquid fertilizer that has potassium supplements in it. Also, do you have enough light in your tank for the plants? I know java ferns are low light plants, but not enough light can cause poor oxygen levels in an aquarium which can stress and kill your fish :(
 
savannahsuch said:
Bristlenose plecos aren't known to eat live plants unless they aren't getting enough food. It sounds like they're getting enough food, so I wouldn't blame the plecos. Melting can happen with new plants, and nutrient deficiencies can cause small holes in the leaves and dying plants. Specifically, it looks like your plants are suffering from potassium deficiency. To fix this issue, all you need is some aquarium safe liquid fertilizer that has potassium supplements in it. Also, do you have enough light in your tank for the plants? I know java ferns are low light plants, but not enough light can cause poor oxygen levels in an aquarium which can stress and kill your fish :(
Click to expand...
I do have the light on and it's very bright. It runs from 12 to 9:30. The java fern is not planted in the substrate, I bought it when it was attached to some driftwood. I dose the tank weekly with Leaf Zone, although I'm not sure if it;'s benefiting any of my other plants apart from my anacharis.

Edit: The bottle of Leaf Zone says I can only dose the tank once a week. Should I do it once every 5 days or should I stick to what it says?
 
Last edited:
If you feed the bristlenose well, they ignore plants. Make sure they have driftwood to chew on as well.

Get a plastic storage container and put it outside in the sun. Fill it with dechlorinated water. Add 1 level tablespoon of lawn/ garden fertiliser for every 20 litres of water. Put some smooth rocks or plastic ornaments in the container of water and leave them until they get covered in algae. Then put the ornaments/ rocks in the tank for the fish to graze on.
Each week you replace the rocks/ ornaments with some that are in the storage container so the bristlenose have some algae to eat.
 
I have fake ornaments and plants in the tank and I usually see one of them on them. There's driftwood in the tank already, mainly because I saw somewhere on the forum that bristlenoses need driftwood. So I went out and got some for them.
 
Fish4dawin said:
I do have the light on and it's very bright. It runs from 12 to 9:30. The java fern is not planted in the substrate, I bought it when it was attached to some driftwood. I dose the tank weekly with Leaf Zone, although I'm not sure if it;'s benefiting any of my other plants apart from my anacharis.

Edit: The bottle of Leaf Zone says I can only dose the tank once a week. Should I do it once every 5 days or should I stick to what it says?
Click to expand...
Okay, that's good. That's very odd though because leaf zone does have potassium in it? It's hard to tell what it is from the picture, so if you could get a better picture of it, that may help. A manganese deficiency can also cause holes, but what you're describing sounds more like potassium deficiency. I wouldn't dose any more than the bottle says, that can cause problems, but if I were you, I might try a different fertilizer. In my experience, I haven't heard great things about leaf zone, so maybe the product is at fault? Not sure.
 
BNs won't eat plants, and certainly not anubias. Digging up plants (or just knocking them out of their way) is a different mater entirely ;).
 
What fertilisers should I go with? Should I buy root tabs to help the anacharis I have in the tank that are in the substrate and some sort of liquid fertiliser?
 
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