Plecs and all other plant eating fish need a lot of roughage in their diet to ensure that their digestive system is able to function effectively. This is no different to other herbivores such as rabbits, horses or even elephants. Without this roughage their intestines don’t function effectively.
The trailing faeces that is often seen on Plecostomus is due to a lack of roughage. By feeding a diet that contains more roughage such as FishScience Mini Algae Wafers together with lettuce and cucumber you can quickly overcome this issue. FishScience Mini Algae Wafers are made with algae that is not ground into a fine powder. As such it replicates the ‘chunks’ of algae that they would consume in the wild and provides the all important roughage.