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I have a 33g. In is right now is 3 australian rainbow fish, 2 dwarf gouramis, 2 yo-yo loaches and 4 scissor tail rasboras. I have algae growing on the glass. The gouramis eat the algae from the decorations only. I was thinking of adding some otts. Is there any other suggestions?

the bristole nose catfish will
and so will the chinese algea eater

otto's would be a great choice if you want to add a couple of them. or you could go with some sort of small pleco like a bristle nose, they do a great job.

i currently have 1 brustle nose
1 common pleco
and a couple of days ago i bought an emperor pleco for $20, looks like a zebra plec. but the body is brown not black and the stripes are an off white instead of a bright white, but i thik it is very cool looking.

chris

kylewayne

Ottos would certainly do the job and do it well for you.

Keith

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CAE are too large, agressive, and not that good of algae eaters. Bristle nose are good algae eaters but seem to prefer cleaning decorations and don't really do as good of job on the glass unless they've cleaned up all the algae elsewhere. A group of otos would be a good choice if you keep up with water quality and they hang on the glass more than bristlenose.

Last edited by sham at 04-Sep-2005 23:45

Ottos will do a great job & so does a Bristlenose Pleco.


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Petey, my little dwarf rubbernosed pleco, does a fantastic job of doing just that. takes care of the glass, decorations, gravel etc.

I tend to think of algae eaters as special forces teams- different ones for different jobs.

1) Ottos are great cos pound for pound you wont find anything that eats more algae. Theyll clean just about anything in a tank in any position except the surface algae from floating plants.

2)Siamese flying foxes are great for getting rid of awkward species of algae that others wont touch, like hair and scale algae .An adult nearly 6 inches long will also eat huge amounts of algae, and scavenges well too.The only downside is that you need to have a few of them and a big tank to make it all work long term. Nice in that they are about the only species that dwarf puffers definately wont attack.Big ones will outcompete ottos for food tho, so i wouldnt advocate combining the two.Basically they are great cos they wont kill anything but eat absolutely anything.Not the best on glass though, they will skim, but dont do it consistantly.

3) Amano shrimp are great for cleaning short plants and wood.Sometimes to an almost surgical level of cleanliness, but they wont do the glass, or tall plants.They wont go where they feel exposed.

4) Plecs are good for "big jobs" they will munch into whole sheets of algae especially on woody decorations, and they will do the glass well, some species are better than others- generally smaller plecs will skim glass better than big ones, but the basic problems with plecs is that a lot of em will ignore algae in the tanks if alternative foods like hikari wafers are provided.Typically theyre not good at doing corners and crevices tho. A team of one plec and half a dozen ottos will clean brilliantly in most tanks. Plecs are handy in that some of em get too big or too difficult to eat for predatory fish, a good choice for the larger community tank.

Most people want their front panel to be completely free of algae and to be honest there is no replacement for a magnet scraper and a few ottos