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Some number of months ago I got an L129. After having it for a while I noticed the plant leaves looked to be riddled with bite marks. Since the L129 was the only new addition I figured it was to blame. I moved it to another tank that only contains swords, crypts, and moss as these are usually hardy plants that are even recommended with goldfish. The plants in the tank it was originally in grew back wonderfully. But in the tank I moved it to...what I have left doesn't even count as swords. My once thriving mother plants have nothing but a few leaves. Half of my crypts are mangled. What gives? I thought these weren't supposed to eat plants! I put plenty of food in the tank and feed a wide variety!

Things I feed include:
Frozen: bloodworms, krill, mysis shrimp, daphnia, brine shrimp, spirulina brine shrimp, mini bloodworms, clams, shrimp, flounder.
Prepared: Repashy, Fluval Bug Bites pleco formula, Hikari carnivore wafers, Hikari algae wafers, Omega One shrimp pellets, New Life Spectrum, green beans

The tank also has a ton of cherry shrimp (they were there long before the pleco and never harmed a plant) so it can feast on those as it pleases. Do I need to start throwing in cucumber or something? Is it not actually an L129? I have decent pictures of it somewhere, I just need to find them. This sucky one will have to do for now

Maybe this is not L 129 ! For me is different from pictures i saw !

it should stop eating plants, when it has reached adulthood. How big is it?

It definitely looks full grown to me. I would say 2.5-3 inches. It is still eating meaty foods, though it doesn't do so in a particularly enthusiastic manner. Fish and shrimp usually have to sit in the tank overnight, then it'll eat some the next morning
Are there any plants they don't seem to eat? Would it help if I put cucumber, spinach, or lettuce in every night? I've been scouring online forever trying to find more, but if they're all just going to kill my plants I'm not sure I want more that badly. It managed to destroy 5 large swords and countless crypts! My tank looks so naked now

This is really strange. I could not imagine a single hypancistrus to destroy so many plants.

Adding cucumber, sweet raw potatoe or some softer fruits like mango, peach or persimon/kaki could stop his rampage
Just put little pieces on a fork (or other stainless steel) and sink them for 24 hours. Once you know what he likes, supply him daily and after some weeks he may have had enough and stop eating plants all together.#

All of my plecos stopped eating echinodorus after some weeks of herbivorous foods. Now they leave them alone, even if I don't feed fruits or vegetables any longer. Only the oldest leaves that seem to die off anyways are being eaten now.

When I had a sultan l264 it would nibble the stalks of my amazon sword, causing the leaves to float off. I cut a hole on the bottom of a plastic aquarium plant cage-pot and inverted it and put it over the plant to protect the plant and allow the leaves to grow up.

Honestly i would rather it wipe out my shrimp than my plants. It's absolutely useless at controlling the shrimp population.
Last night I put in cucumber, spinach, and a few other leafy greens. No idea if it ate any cucumber since the shrimp seemed to completely take over all of it. The leafy greens are devoid of bite marks, though the few new leaves one of my swords put out now look like swiss cheese.

I really am tempted to put my swords in a cage, but then it would just focus more on the crypts.

I'll keep trying the cucumber and leafy things, and i'll probably try sweet potato. Maybe this time I won't blanch the leafy things since it seems to like chewing through thick leaves.

Another odd thing it likes to do is dig. It won' t use any caves I put in there, it would rather dig a sizable ditch next to the caves. It's a little problematic in a dirted tank...it keeps breaking my sand cap.

Maybe cages for the crypts too. Also maybe some in the taller crypts with long roots can withstand digging?

Maybe try looking for these decent pictures of your fish that you mentioned... something seems odd here.

It doesn't dig specifically at the roots, just in general against things to make a deep dip to sit in. It's odd. And annoying. It's a good thing quilt batting is so cheap because so much dirt gets stirred up that I have to replace it every week. The foam and ceramic media turn dark brown/black from the dirt.At least the pleco tends to cover the dirt back up with the sand soon after it makes a mess. I guess it doesn't like it.

I couldn't find the old pictures so I fished it out and took new ones. I never realized how well an angry pleco could jump. I also measured it. Body only it's just over 2 inches, tail included 2.75 inches. Small, but small enough to still be eating plants?

Adults are more like 4" total length. almost 5" is possible. Even though this young male shows some sexual dimorphisms, I would not call him mature, yet.

Your fish definitely needs to eat a little more proteinbased foods than all these vegetables/plants. They won't really make him strong and big. He is a little on the thin side. Though he is not in a bad condition at all, so no need to worry.

Do you have the possibility to keep him in a little hang on breeder or something like that for some days? to feed him more targeted with meaty wafers and the like. He might need to get educated to eat your foods instead of the plants.

He get a lot of carnivore wafers, bug bites, chunks of frozen fish and shrimp, and various frozen foods that all the other fish gets. He just never seems to like much of it, which is why I've tried veggies. He doesn't like those either. He'll come out of the cave/ditch if he smells repashy but he won't actually go find it.
Last night I put in 2 chunks of flouder and he didn't eat. Its a 50/50 chance that he'll eat that stuff. He never eats the shrimp. He won't eat silversides. He doesn't seem fond of clams. I think he eats snails sometimes. I've been tempted to drive to the warf and buy whatever they caught that morning to see if he'll eat it.

I have a 10 gallon quarantine tank that'll be empty the end of this week. I can put him in there. All I have otherwise are net breeders.

Thank you for sexing him by the way! I've tried but I suck. Do plecos like garlic as much as other fish? I could try soaking his food in garlic guard before feeding.

I had gotten 2 more l129 but one died from getting stuck in a rock and the other had internal parasites (I've had to stop buying from that store because of this problem) and died before I realized what the problem was. Maybe I should put this guy through another round of deworming just in case? If there's a chance he would like to hunt at all I wouldn't mind getting some guppies for him to eat the fry.

Oh and I contained his digging area. While he was out of the tank yesterday I put a bottomless cave over his ditch. He is now happily in the cave and dirt clouds are relatively contained.

I think your plants get this holes because of lack of nutrients but not because pleco eats them.

Its a dirt tank less than a year old. It gets root tabs and I EI dose. No problems until the pleco. The tank the pleco was in before this one also got holes in leaves until I took the pleco out and then all plants recovered and are in perfect condition.

I wouldn't get guppies for food, the L129 won't hunt them, and likely not the shrimp in your tank either.

It would typically get it's food in the form of tiny bugs/crustaceans/insect larvae it finds on and between rocks. It may try to eat a dead shrimp or fish though.

It sounds like this is the only fish in your tank, once you have monitored the fish for several weeks to make sure it doesn't have signs of disease or the parasites you mentioned. Then it might be an idea to get some fish as dithers, maybe a group of small tetras, they may make the L129 feel safer when coming out for food and therefore it might eat more. In the wild if there are no other fish about it usually means a predator is nearby.

There was other fish in the tank and they all developed lethal cysts. I haven't decided on new fish yet, or where to get them since the store I used to get fish at always gets poor fish now. Having other fish in that tank didn't help its eating. The first tank it was in is fully stocked but it didn't eat well in there either

Sabrinah, are you feeding him during day or night(lights off)?

He will not come eat during day. He will eat once the lights are off. If there is no food at night he has no chance but to eat plants. He will also, like Marc said, not touch shrimps or any live fish. He is not a predator. He eats what is stuck to the surfaces of his surroundings, like freshwater sponges or tiny mussels/snails. Since there are none of these available in our hobbyist tanks they will scrub the surfaces of plants and hurt them while doing so.

Since this fish had parasites, he is probably wild caught and never got used to commercial foods. He needs to learn what he can eat in your tank. Chances are very high that he will stop touching your plants once he knows what a pleco wafer, tab or repashy is.

From what I can tell he is not suffering badly from any parasites right now. His belly seems fine if you consider that he does not eat many proteins.
There is 3 ways of going about this.
1.Keep feeding him expensive plants
2.Keep him with plecos that eat commercial foods, they are social and not dumb, he will learn what to eat really fast.
3.Keep him in a private, smaller tank/breeder and start off with frozen foods, such as artemia and black mosquito larvae (no bloodworms). When you see his belly gets fatter you can try with commercial foods. Repashy could be a good alternative to the frozen foods here. Again only feed when lights are off. Filtration not so strong that food gets "filtered".

Thank you guys for helping me try and figure this fish out!

I do feed nightly when lights are off. I toss in something meaty (dry or frozen) and something more on the veggie side (it keeps the shrimp away from the meaty stuff). The tank is away from traffic so there's not much to disturb him. I can't find any L129 that aren't wild caught anywhere. I've searched since the 2 died which was months ago. 5 or 6 months ago maybe? I don't know what other type of pleco to put in there. I have a baby blue eye ancistrus that eats like a champ but I don't know that it would be good to put in with the hypan. It's just so little! And while I'm sure the ancistrus would happily eat meaty food that's not really ideal. At some point I will put dither fish in the tank but I don't want anything that will totally wipe out my shrimp. Since all my big plants got destroyed the cover is limited to moss.

I have a massive MTS population that I think he eats some of. He does completely refuse dry foods. I've sat by the tank for hours at night before waiting for him to come out, only to see him check out the wafer for a second then leave. He'll eat flounder sometimes and occassionally bloodworms. Other frozen foods (I have 12 types I believe) get ignored. When the quarantine tank is empty (it currently has wild rummynose tetras. Getting them to eat has been absolutely no problem) I'll move him in. The Repashy I have is community plus and grub pie (insectivore). Are those good enough or should I get more?

Hi all,

Fundulopanchax76 wrote: 22 Nov 2017, 18:35 I think your plants get this holes because of lack of nutrients but not because pleco eats them.

I'm pretty sure that is plec damage.

cheers Darrel

Well, it's been quite a while since I asked about this issue. My L129 wants to be a vegetarian. He still eats plants. He's killed so many plants. My monster anubias that I had to move into that tank because it was too big for the others is no more. I've tried so, so many foods and it's always a 50/50 shot whether he's going to choose the actual food or the plants. Sometimes he wants tilapia, sometimes he prefers anubias. Plants win over fish guts. His favorite was amazon swords but he ate all those. I'm talking like 10 plants, one of which was a massive mother plant. He doesn't want any actual vegetables I put in the tank. That would be ludicrous. He's also still determined not to eat carnivore pellets. He know they're food. He gives them a taste, then promptly spits them out and swims away like they just offended him. Better yet, sometimes he pushes them away so they don't contaminate his favorite cave. It's annoying though because when I feed the other fish he comes out of his cave to sniff around the entrance and he might peruse around a bit, clearly interested in the smell, but if I feed the same stuff at night he chooses to eat the plants instead. He also still likes to rearrange my substrate and dig pits, which is entertaining to watch but annoying in that it's another way he's killing plants. Why do I have to be so attached to a fish that doesn't let me have nice things?

LOL, I feel your pain.

Based on my experience with food training plecos, maybe the only way to get it to stop eating plants and start eating other foods is to remove all plants for a long while (or forever). I know when I've introduced new foods, often the fish don't bite at the food the first, second, or even third time. The fish need to get really hungry before they finally accept the new food.

But if all that fails and your fish starts eating plants again, I guess you'll need to escape your tank plant-free.

Good luck, Eric

I did put him in a bare tank for quite a while and he did a good job of starving himself. I was moving soon and didn't want a deathly skinny fish, even if he was only eating plants, so back in the usual tank he went. I'm tempted to put him in the breeding box I got to try and breed my last pair of pygmy corys. Maybe this time around he would eat. I debated getting him a friend, but last time I did that they died. I looked at the only decent fish store around here when I first moved and I think they said all their L129s are wild caught. The tank he's in now is also pretty small, only a 20H, so I'm not sure the foot print is big enough for another one. I should just get 2 new breeding boxes and toss him in one.

Sorry in advance for the long post.

I've had this fish for nearly two years now and he's FINALLY eating bloodworms consistently. He'll nibble on garlic-soaked tilapia but I don't think he eats a substantial amount of that. He kinda eats Repashy but he also spits a lot of it out. Plants are still his favorite thing. The only plants I have left in his tank are a couple of crypts that apparently don't taste good, a dwarf lily that thankfully sends out new leaves faster than he can eat them, java moss, and floaters. Since most of the plants are gone his second favorite thing has become Indian Almond Leaves. Once they've been in there for a week he'll start eating them.

He seemed really happy when I was getting ready to move over a year ago and had him and a baby bristlenose in together. I was fasting him for the move (zucchini was in for the baby) so I don't know if he would have done any better, but he was out and about all the time. He followed the ancistrus all over the tank and hung out on top of caves with it in the middle of the day. Unfortunately, the little ancistrus didn't handle the stress of the move well and died within a week of getting to the new place. I was tempted to try housing them together for the long term once the ancistrus was a couple of inches larger. All the plecos the LFS here gets in are frighteningly tiny so I haven't gotten another friend for him. They had two 2-inch plecos labeled as L129 when I first moved here but they were almost solid brown so I was skeptical. I finally gave in and asked them to order L129 so I can try to get him a lady friend. I know they aren't really social, but he seemed so much more comfortable when he had a friend. The only issue with that is trying to get a female. I suck at sexing, and they're likely to come in too small to sex anyway. Maybe I should get 2 to increase my chances?

I thought he had grown a decent amount in the last year and a half but it turns out he's only grown like a centimeter. I'm not that surprised since he's refused to eat anything but plants. He does have a little bit of a rounded belly on him so he's not in tragic shape, but he's definitely not great compared to my other fish. I think I'm going to try some live blackworms and maybe micro worms/banana worms/Walter worms. The blackworms I plan on just dumping in and letting them live in the sand. He mostly keeps to a small section of the tank that he's cleared the plants and moss out of by digging in it every night, so there's a solid chance that the blackworms can set up shop in the areas he doesn't seem to explore. The tiny worms I need for rainbow fry anyway, so I figure if I put some on top of an almond leaf he might get a little more protein.

Hi Sabrinah,

From the photos, your fish is clearly a male.

You should add a bowl in which to place the live worms. That will prevent them from going straight into the sand.

I never see my debilittera out unless I do a 70-90% cool water change, and even then only thre juveniles come or. The adults are very shy.

I never see my debilittera eat, so I don't feed the tank in daylight. I feed then only just before bedtime.

I hope you find friends for him. For what it's worth , I buy fish 4-8 at a time whenever possible. Not because I want so many, but I want my fish to have choices when they look for mates.

Cheers, Eric

Oh geez, I don't think I can afford 4 of them plus other fish I'm waiting for to come in. My LFS is pretty expensive because it's the only real one around, minus Petco and a pathetic store full of dead guppies and cories. I'll definitely buy 2 though, maybe 3 if they're cheaper due to small size. I would have ordered them online forever ago but I live in a tiny town in a rural area and there's no such thing as overnight or 1-day shipping here. Even 2-day shipping always turns in to 4 days. On top of that, the only people that recognize my house address as valid is UPS, and they throw the packages like 8 feet from the front gate to the porch. Those people would murder fish.

I have a little clay plate I cover in Repashy sometimes. I think that will work for the first meal of blackworms. I do want some of them around the tank so he can hunt for them because he loves to dig. Do they usually like grindal worms? I could try those with, or instead of, the blackworms.

I only get to see him regularly because his favorite cave is in the middle of the tank, right in front of the glass. He has more secluded options with the exact same cave, but he doesn't like them apparently. I think he might feel safe in a pretty open spot because that tank is only a few inches off the floor in a corner so it doesn't get bothered often, and most of the floor of the tank is covered in a couple of inches of moss except for the trails he keeps clean. His tail is almost always visible and sometimes he hangs out right in front of the cave. When I feed that tank right before the lights shut off he always comes out when he smells the bloodworms or the garlic from the tilapia and looks around for it. He doesn't usually eat it when the lights are on, but he seems to make a point of finding it before the lights go off and coming back to it later. If I don't go on that half of the room for a few hours and lay at the edge of my bed to watch the tank, he usually comes out, even during the day. As I'm writing this (tank lights are off) I can see a vague outline of his body pulling bloodworms from between crypt leaves. He does all his maintenance on his second, self-dug cave when the lights are on in the morning. I should probably note that I did try total darkness, covering the tank up with towels, paper, a sheet, etc. but none of that did any good.

I hope getting more L129 improve his eating. If I got him an ancistrus again I'm pretty sure he would do better but the diets just don't go together. On the off chance that the LFS just can't get any L129 in at all, should I try some albino corydoras or khuli loaches for comfort? For the record, he did live with pygmy corydoras for a while and it didn't help his eating, but maybe they were just too small to be comforting.

sabrinah, where are you located? (What country, state, city)?

I'm in a little town in Northern California. I think the post office is the only thing preventing it from being classified as a village.

I'm in Stockton, CA and I have a few juvenile debilittera I bred. If you ever make it into the Stockton or Sacramento area I could sell you some for $10-15 each depending on size.

Cheers, Eric

If I don't find any I might have to send my mom to buy a couple before she comes up here. She lives near Stockton and she usually comes to visit me in the summer.

I remembered another store I'll go look at today. I didn't like it at all when I checked it out the first time but I can't remember why. I know it's better to get fish from the same shipment, or at the very least the same store, but if they only have one would it be good to get that one and another one from the other store when they get the order in so one comes out of quarantine a couple weeks earlier? Or should I just wait to get both of them from the same order? They don't seem like popular fish around here so I won't have a lot to choose from.