Righto have a slight algae problem that I was wanting to fix by adding in something to handle it, now I don't have a tank anywhere near as big for a Pleco, however since I have Siamese Fighting fish thought about Siamese algae eaters?? has anyone used these fish before with other semi agressive fish? I'm looking to keep them with several other female fighters and possibly a school of dwarf chain loaches.

I was also looking at oto catfish too as they are a numbers fish too.

thanks

Steve

my one is peacefull, its living with cories and female fighters at the moment.

He also did a wonderful job of cleaning up the algae

I had 2 in a community tank with Dwarf Chain Loaches, no problems at all. And they are great at ridding a tank of algae.

thanks! have gotten some Oto's which are going well for starters.

We've had trouble finding any up here. Our LPS says they're not on their lists and cannot get them. But Animates and Hollywoods in Auckland have them....go figure.

they are also sold as black line flying fox

How big is your tank?

I have 2 SAEs which I've had from a young age and they have kinda outgrown my tank of 220L.

They can get cranky when they have a less than ideal tank size. My one is temoporarily living in a small tank after his big one smashed and he chases his tankmates round every now and again. Never had any problems with him in a larger tank though.

SAE's can be identified by the black line going right through the tail, and when they are smaller they will school. The schooling is the easiest thing to spot, you can see them doing it from a mile away, the Chinese Algaes don't do this. As other's have said they are currently on the importers lists as black line flying foxes so most likely labeled this way in stores.

You would want to be sure they are SAE regardless of what they are sold as. Black line flying foxes are not the same thing and are not as good at cleaning up algae. They seem to get a bit more lazy as they get older and will eat less algae if they get other foods that they prefer. I have 2 in a 1200 tank and they get fed once a month wether they need it or not.

You would want to be sure they are SAE regardless of what they are sold as

thats what happened to me. I ended up with one SAE and a black line flying fox

Long slender brown/gold fish. Has a bold, black strip running the full length of its body to the very edge of its caudal fin (other similar species stop short of the caudal fin). Has Rostral‎ barbels ('moustache').

Easy to confuse it with the Flying Fox (Epalzeorhynchos kalopterus) which has a extra thin gold/bronze strip on top of the black strip.

Very similar to the False Flying Fox when young, except that fish has a light strip running above the black band.

Very similar indeed with the Siamese Flying Fox except with that fish the black band doesn't go into the caudal fin.

http://www.theaquariumwiki.com/Crossocheilus_siamensis