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I have found myself in a dilema. I have been keeping fish for years and have had great success. I just recently started with plecos. Months ago I purchased a group of L280 Hypancistrus vandragti . They came in healthy. Over time I lost three out of the original 10. I had put some driftwood in the tank and I think they were eating looking for critters on it and there were none. They crapped out a ton of wood. I pulled the wood and the deaths stopped. The seller replaced the fish even though I believe it to be my fault. I also got 5 more. So I had 15 of them in a 40 gallon tank with a bunch of pleco caves. I never see them. Now I have lost 2 more.
So here are the specifics
40 gallon tank with sand and muliple pleco caves.
sponge filters
PH 7.8 The sellers kept them in 8.0 with zero losses.
KH 50 ppm
GH 90 ppm
Ammonia and nitrites 0
NItrates 20 ppm
I feed them all sorts of protien type dry food including the flake food from the seller with some frozen blood worms and live daphnia.( the daphnia is since I lost the 2 latest ones)
I have kept fish for years and I really don't lose fish. This is just killing me.
Would anybody have any suggestions before I lose any more.
thanks in advance

Sorry for your loss. I lost 10 out of 12 last year due to an uneaten food/water fouling event one week after purchase.

This year I added 8 more. Havent had any losses.

pH about 7.5
TDS about 250 ppm
Temp 82F

Weekly feeding live black worms and weekly feeding one or two algae wafers. No wood in the tank since purchase, but by coincidence, I added wood today.

I hope you can stabilize them.

Cheers, Eric

Sorry to hear that you've been having problems with them.

I've not had experience with them myself, but would recommend keeping the water refreshed frequently, especially in the early days of keeping them. I would suggest changing at least 50% every week. If its not possible to do in one go, do 2 or more smaller changes each week.

I have seen more people have breeding success with these over the past year or so, good luck getting them settled in, hopefully they'll start breeding for you after some months of being comfortable and eating well.