Thanks for the comments everybody. I picked up a dwarf pleco today. I have a quick question though. I normally use aquarium salt in my tank. The fish guy said that it would be fine for the pleco, but now I'm not so sure. Has anybody else has Fisher's fatal experience with aquarium salt?

You might ask yourself why you want one or more of those Loricariids. If you want cool and bizarre fishes, go for them.

Stay away from the "regular" plecos, often Hypostomus plecostomus, if you have a 10-gallon aquarium. Hint: members of that genus (while really cool looking) are a major food item for some river people.

There are over 1,000 suckermouth or Loricariid catfishes from South American. They come in all sizes, so check on their ultimate length. One of the really cool groups of small suckermouths are the Peckoltia or "clown plecos". Their males are very territorial and only one of them would "fit" or survive in a 10-gallon tank.

Even the males of the many species of Ancistris are intolerant of other males. Maybe an exception would be if they were raised up together as fry - at least to a certain point. What can be deadly aggression in an aquarium though, is a survival strategy in nature - the fish get spread out as widely as possible.

The little and very cute species of Otocinclus and  Parotocinclus are great algae cleaners. They are a little touchy about getting chilled and water conditions though. Also, virtually all of them are wild caught and they can bring in diseases - especially dangerous to other catfish.

If you want Loricariids to clean algae (which they do well until spoiled with algae tablets), a clean, well rinsed, soap-less pot scrubber is a whole lot cheaper. What algae fragments aren't eaten by the guppies, can be siphoned out with the next partial water change.

So the scouring pads are cheap and they don't use up a lot of oxygen. They don't get velvet and they don't poop a lot. ;)