don't know if they require driftwood, but yes they are damn aggressive and have a huge appetite. This one guy's adonis would take pellets right off the surface (prolly out of desperation cuz he wasn't feeding it enough to begin with), and he had to remove his prize flowerhorn (which was the same length as the pleco) out of the tank because the adonis tore the fh up and made it look like crap (and that fh had trashed tons of dither cichlids prior to his adding the adonis)