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algae- eaters does any one use them?


dennis

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When I first started I purchased two at the urging of the sales lady(who avidly assured me they were passive and good community fish) to put with my angels and guppies. They grew so fast. One was chasing my angels and so I returned it to the shop and swopped for more guppies. All was well the the remaining one seemed fine and I grew to like his antics. HOWEVER my golden angel started being sick and nothing I did seemed to help until checking the tank one night I saw the Chinese algae eater sucking onto the side of him bearing him down. That algae eater departed this earth rather quickly.

Fun fish however beware of what you put in with them for algae is not all that they eat in my experience. To this day I am racially prejudiced :-? against all ALL Chinese algae eaters. in case you had not figured I simply love LOVE the angel fish - they hooked me into fish keeping :D

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I used to have them many years ago and they were fine but I think someone genetically modified them a few years ago and added a piranha and a Hoover gene. They now seem to spend more time chasing and sucking the sides off fish than they do eating algae. I would never get one again.

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It is my understanding you should only have one flying fox in a tank (someone will correct me if I am wrong). I had a flying fox once which was great until it grew. The older it got, the stroppier it got, and it kept chasing all the other fish. They are also very good at leaping out of your tank through the smallest of gaps!

I like the bristlenose (ancistrus lineolatus) as an algae eater. It also depends on what sort of algae you want a fish to eat. Some algae is ignored by ALL fish!

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Hi Dennis,

good to see that others have steered you away from chinese algae eaters.

I'd recommend bristle noses (Ancistrus sp.) or/and black line flying foxes (also known as Siamese algae eaters). The blacklines are one of the few fish that will eat the black beard algae. I've kept a number of black line flying foxes in the same tank without any problems (an I know Warren has a whole squadron of them in is big tank) - they can be a bit boisterous but other than that no problems.

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