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There are literally hundreds of species of plecos. Some are pure carnivores and some pure herbivores. Many species of plecos will devour aquarium plants, and many won't touch them.
BN (ancistrus) should not harm plants, and I have not seen this in my jungle at all, which houses three. Clown plecos are another excellent planted tank pleco. I have heard that rubberlip/bulldog plecos can damage plant leaves with rasping on them, but not necessarily consuming the plant.
Yea my rubbernose damaged a few leaves on my plants..that is before it mysteriously died with the rest of my bottom dwellers. =/ I suspect it to be from contaminated slate rock that I used. A friend gave it to me after i commented on how nice some would look in a planted tank. I found out later that it *may* have come into contact with some HCL in his geology class. Boo 8O
Hypancistrus and baryancistrus spp. (e.g. Queen Arabesque, King Tiger, Gold Nugget) often have very strong teeth that will destroy larger-sized plants.
I have a rubber nose and a gold nugget pleco ... and while I've never seen them eating the plants, my amazon sword leaves do have lots of holes in them. But I don't have any problems with any of my other plants ... just the sword.
plants: amazon sword, java fern, green+purple cabomba, Red Ludwigia, baby tears, Red Myrio, and a bunch of italian/jungle vals.
Just how well should you feed your plecs? My sextet -- a common, a clown, a gold nugget, and three red gibs -- consume half a Zuchini a week and a pile of sinking shrimp pellets. It looks pretty much as if the Zuke just goes in one end and comes out the other as tubes. What live plants that I have -- very few owing to the African cichlids I have -- the plecs have never touched. Jeff