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So, I have a bit of a problem. Well, not so much a problem as an aesthetic hindrance.

I have a planted, amazon blackwater, tank and my plants were quite stunted. So, I got better lights.

This helped the plants but caused a fairly large algae outbreak (not to mention that I went on a week long vacation and the feeder I got fed that algae like nobody's business ).

So, to solve this I got a busynose pleco. Over night the algae problem was gone.

Now the problem is that he likes to munch on my bogwood (which is fine) except he leaves PILES of wood colored feces all over the tank.

In these fishes' native rivers this would be swept down stream and dissolved as it went. In my tank it does not do that at all.

Short of vacuuming it out every day, what can I do about this? Saltwater has hermit crabs... what does freshwater get?

I'd like to keep this tank as authentic (amazon blackwater) as possible and I guess I'm not totally opposed to getting rid of the pleco as long as I can replace it with something that will keep the algae down and not eat my leaves.

Any suggestions?

"A fish swims through the sea, while the sea is in a certain sense contained within the fish."
-mewithoutYou

ya, plecos will do that, and yes, vaccume regularly. I've got a couple small butterfly plecos that don't seem to leave nearly so much waste as a bristlenose, they work decently. If you're running a canister filter, a UV steriliser hooked into the loop works VERY well. Algae will still grow if you have one, but it will greatly reduce the ammount. More plants to suck up nutrients might help as well.

Technically, the "common" bristlenose is not a blackwater resident, nor is it an Amazonian fish. Wild caughts bearing the domesticus pattern usually come from subpiedimont streams and often reputed to be from Peru.

The wood shavings on the substrate is not actually fecal matter---after all, ancistrus lack the gut symbiotes to digest hemicellulose. Rather, you probably chose a softwood to place in your tank, and while the pleco is grazing across the surface of the wood, it is shaving off small fragments of wood. The easiest way to remedy this problem is to simply buy a harder wood. Stay away from the stuff marketed as Malaysian---that stuff breaks apart at the gentlest touch. Mopani is medium in toughness, followed by other African bogwoods; they are a good choice. Other hard exotic driftwoods, if you can find them include cherry, dog, and other inert flowering trees.

Huh...

Everything that I've read has said that Ancistrus Sp. is in fact from all over South America including the Amazonian tributaries. Also, that most of the varieties love to munch on real wood in the tank.

If you would like to check out the compiled research that I've done an comment on it... that would be great!

http://www.thefishlist.net/profile.php?id=4

I will check out the butterfly pleco (I'm assuming Dekeyseria Brachyura?) option as well. Although, it seems from what I've read so far that they too are 6-incers. Do they not produce as much waste?

Thanks all.

"A fish swims through the sea, while the sea is in a certain sense contained within the fish."
-mewithoutYou

Huh...

“Everything that I've read has said that Ancistrus Sp. is in fact from all over South America including the Amazonian tributaries. Also, that most of the varieties love to munch on real wood in the tank.”
Well, then they would be wrong. There are only two genera of loricariidae that are capable of even digesting wood; panaque and lasiancistrus (in the latter, only a few select species). Wood INGESTED by other fish are simply due to sloppy eating and pass right through the system without much note.
Also, yes, the genus ancistrus is spread throughout not only south America (largest range and genera breadth in all of loricariidae), but central america as well. However, the fish marketed as the common ancistrus and referred to in loricariid circles as Ancistrus sp. “3”, has been reported from clear water foothill streams (subpiedmont), t least according to I. Seidel, who brought back a number of specimens reputed to look quite similar to sp. 3 from the quoted area.

“If you would like to check out the compiled research that I've done an comment on it... that would be great!”
Sounds fine. Given the breadth of the genus, though, I don’t think a single profile would fit all the fish spoken for. Take, for example, a. rannunculus and a. cf. triradiatus (sp. Magdelena?); one is a strict carnivore which lives in deep, clear, warm waters, while the other is an omnivore with a more herbivorous inclination and lives in shallow riffle streams sometimes tailing down to the mid-fifties. Also, most ancistrus are, as previously stated, not blackwater fish, especially not sp. 3, which will breed readily in hard tap—blackwater species; dolichopterus, L110, L107, etc. are far more fragile and, suffice to say, will fail to breed in overly hard water.

"I will check out the butterfly pleco (I'm assuming Dekeyseria Brachyura?) option as well. Although, it seems from what I've read so far that they too are 6-incers. Do they not produce as much waste?"
Being biofilm grazer just like ancistrus, they should produce similar amounts of waste, as they will concordantly feed lightly on algae.

6 inches yes, but they don't have near the same mass- they're a much flatter fish. And even at that, there's a massive disproprotion between the ammount of waste one butterfly pleco and one bristlenose seems to create. I've vaccumed out the bottom while owning both, and feeding in simmilar ammounts with the other fish remaining the same. Bristlenose also seem more active from my experience, which could make for a much higher calorie requirement.

I have raised and spawned several species of ancistrus as well as L-052. Ancistrus domesticus grows smaller, narrower, and has smaller gills, thus, I doubt ancistrus are noticably (sp?) messier fish. The bioload each creates is probably impossible to measure without precise scientific measurements, and, given the similarity in size, there is, honestly, in comparison to the size of the tank, not all that much of a difference in waste production (keeping in mind the sheer amount of water dilluting the speculative levels of nitrogenous contaminants). However, limivores such as these species are, assuming they are fed appropraitely, almost ceaselessly feeding, thus, in comparison to other more omnivorous loricariidae, they tend to produce more waste, and the amount of waste released is proportionate to the food ingested. Dekeyseria are more specialized grazers, similar to baryancistrus and should be ideally fed three times or more a day. They SHOULD almost constantly be producing solid waste. It's quite probable that your ancistrus are merely more aggressive feeders, and that your "butterfly" plecos are being insufficiently fed. But all this is merely speculation and, really, the argument is a silly and unecessary one, as given modern filtration and sufficient water changes, the difference in waste produced by the two is almost undetectable.

By the way, the most harmful waste products are unable to be catalogued merely by eye--it is in fact ammonia and like compounds, secreted from the gills, that make up most of the biological excretion of the fish, thus, your assumption that ancistrus are larger bioload producers, given that they excrete more solid waste is a misguided one.