Hi Robyn,
Thank you for your site. I recently aquired a 55 gallon tank and along with it came a large pleco. He/she is a smidge over 10" long! Your site answered alot of my questions but can you tell me please, how much should I feed and how often. The local pet store told me to feed every other day to keep it from growing. lol This was before I'd seen it and now I don't think growth is much of a concern. I have two of the brands of wafers that you mention on your site. The pet store also told me not to feed veggies because they can "mess up the water". Have you experienced any water quality problems because of this? BTW, there isn't any algea currently in the tank and there's only one other fish with the pleco at this time.
Thank you,
Lisa

Yeah, I think it's already grown quite a bit! I think it is cruel to partially starve an animal to try to make it grow slower. Since you don't have much algae, you have to feed the pleco. For my 14" pleco, I put in one algae wafer each night of a few different brands. I also put in cucumber daily and remove the old stuff daily. I use about a 3" long piece (cucumber cut in half and deseeded). As long as the seeds are out, cucumber doesn't make that much of a mess. Yes, the tank is more prone than other tanks to have occasionally suspended algae outbreaks (algae and microrganisms and bacteria all like the cucumber I guess) but the tank is very clear most of the time. When I used to leave the cucumber in there longer, then it would make more of a mess. I don't feed zucchini or squash anymore. Not only did Plecy not really like it but it did make a huge mess. Your pleco will do much better with some actual food and not just the processed commercial stuff. If you look at the ingredients, I bet there's not much plant material in there, mostly fish meal and fillers probably. Try to find some with more spirulina algae listed but even that is a marine algae and not what a pleco in the wild would be eating. Plecy also likes to eat a few sinking shrimp pellets each day for some protein since they don't just need algae contrary to what some people think/say. Good luck!