I have some nice driftwood but would like to seal it to prevent the plec from eating it and producing a lot of waste, he also ignores the algae on the glass when the DW was there.
I wouldn't seal the driftwood. From what I understand plecos use driftwood to help digest food and youight end up killing your plecos due to them knawing threw the finish. Also if you seal driftwood you will have trouble getting it to sink
Agree with this. Pleco will try to eat it if senses it's wood, then will consume the sealant. Not a good plan imo since a sealant is likely very poisonous.
Many (all?) plecos produce waste. The ones I had made a lot of it. They are like cows or elephants that live in the water. Afaik, gigantic amounts of roughage is supposed to be going through their digestive track.
I have had plecos and really enjoyed them. I get driftwood for the pleco. Just a thought here, but consider this for a second: if the driftwood is more important, then maybe the pleco should not be in the tank.
not really for free, you pay more for a pleco then a piece of foam and the amount of extra waste the pleco produces through waste and food increases the nutrient content within the tank which just leads to more algae anyways
Glass cleaner scrapes the 5 grams of algae, 5 grams of algae goes to filter.
Pleco eats 5 grams of algae, something like 3 grams is converted to energy, 1 gram for growth, 1 gram goes to filter as poop.
, even if you managed to seal the wood safely or replaced it with a fake plastic piece it won't solve your problem . algae will still grow on it and your pleco will still chose the solid object over a pane of glass because it feels less exposed .
A pleco will not keep the glass clean even when it does graze on it because lots is left behind . There is no lazy way around it , if you want to remove algae you'll need to do it yourself lol
Or reduce the lighting so algae doesn't grow in the first place .
