Stem Eating Ancistrus??

[SunnyP]

I have just finished trimming my plants and doing a water change. I found something had been munching on my L. Aromatica. I know the Ancistrus will destroy leaves of plants as it tries to collect algae of it but will it actually tear apart stems. It has happened to 2 out the 3 stems. There are some tiny snails, Amano shrimps and a Red Honey Gourami but I don't think it could be those.

If it is the Ancistrus is there a reason for him to do this.

Is he just not able to find any food in the tank so he resorts to my wonderfully growing stems??

 

[a1Matt]

Hi Sunny,

I have kept an Ancistrus or two in my tank for 10 years and never had them eat any of my plants. (I'm also pretty stingy with the food at times, so it is not to do with food levels. It may just be my good luck!)

 

[SunnyP]

I've been putting more algae wafers in the tank since I started this topic and I can't seem to find any more deteoriation of any of the plants. So I can clearly assume its either the shrimps or the ancistrus, more likely the ancistrus as the shrimps would have chewed all the plants away and not a specific section.

I'm see gonna to keep the feeding up a bit more and see when I come to trimming if i can notice and chewing.

 

[beeky]

Depending on how large it is, it's weight have broken the stems as it crashes about the tank.

Mine used to wear through the amazon sword leaves until they were transparent if I didn't put enough spinach in the tank.

 

[TDI-line]

I did breed these for a while, but eventually sold them all, except for one.

And my plants still kept getting munched, including the plant you named above.

My blyxa was in a very poor state, most leaves where half eaten, with this one fish covering 720 litres and over 100 stems.

So i did a major tank overhaul, and returned him to my LFS.

Since then, i have nothing being eaten.

I also have about 20 large amano shrimps, nerite snails and 100 odd normal shrimps.