[AquaAurora]

Well, let me put it to you this way.

I had a large endli bichir in my 75....14"...now, a bichir is more flexible and not as thick as a 14" pleco

Even though he didn't eat plants, he uprooted EVERYTHING just be swimming and turning.

Now, honestly, I don't see a planted tank working with a large pleco. Whatever it didn't devour (which I'm assuming it would devour most any plant) it would uproot.

If I were to even think of attempting that...I wouldn't do it in a tank any less than 2 times the width of the fish....meaning if it was a foot long pleco I wouldn't attempt a planted tank unless it was like...a 120 gallon or larger tank.

Even then, I'd only attempt low light plants like gals...maybe anubias. I'd be afraid that a pleco of that size would just munch on the leafs of anything large, and that any fine leafed stem plants would just get knocked around.

Just my two cents, and I'm sure others will say the same.

Ok thank you for the advice and feed back on your experience with bichir (cool looking fish btw).

I've been using youtube videos to research tanks with large plecos and live plants to get some ideas. I most commonly see amazon sword, a few types of anubia, and some needle-y leaved long stem plants (have to look them up) that all seem to be surviving their plecos so I may do something simular. Will have to figure out how to anchor the plants too, anubia I know works well once established on driftwood.. though I've been trying to do that in my current tank with anubia nana and my pleco keeps munch on the roots before they can grow out and latch onto the wood.

 

[AquaAurora]

I had a 9in pleco in my planted tanks, he rarely caused issues. Must of been just my fish.

Do you know what type of pleco did you had secuono?

I had a 6inch bn pleco. He never caused problems with eating and uprooting only happened during feeding time and that was just a few unrooted stem plants that he hated being in that 1 6 inch corner space but was otherwise perfect.

According to many owners, the bristlenose plecos are much better around plants than the larger breeds like the sailfin and common pleco.