Best invertabrae, or fish for eating black hair algae off of plants.
- Thread starter Brandorr
- Start date
I've read that otos will eat it. I just got 3 today for that purpose, I'll let you know if they eat it.
day two, they still haven't touched any of the bba or puffy green moss, only cleaning glass and plants.
Before you keep adding algae eating fish/shrimp/etc., what size tank and what else is in the tank?
Amano shrimp and cherry shrimp are pretty good algae eaters too... but first you need to tell us what else is in your tank.
Amano shrimp and cherry shrimp are pretty good algae eaters too... but first you need to tell us what else is in your tank.
As recommended by someone on this forum, I doubled the recommended dose of Flourish Excel, twice a week. It did a good job of getting rid of the bba.
The last time I bought some anarchis, in bunches, it came with wildlife I just yesterday, after some research, decided was a kind of small shrimp called a "scud" (or gammeris [sp?]). I rescued a few and put them, along with some common ram red snails, in a jar, then a small one-cup size bowl, and just recently a one-quart clear acrylic container, the better to watch the scud zoom around. Normally I'd find them unwatchable (there are better things to be fascinated by), but I have discovered something interesting about them. I put bottom cuttings from the original anarchis in with them, since I figured the scud lived their when I bought the plant, they could continue to do so. I get several kinds of algae in my ten gallon tank, including an irritating one that might be beard algae (dark, dark green, maybe 1/4" long, in loose bunches). I usually snip off leaves or branches, in the case of bacopa or even anarchis. I started dropping these trimmings in the scud container. I put a branch of bacopa with algae on it (both the stringy kind and a coating green kind) in the container just yesterday -- and this morning I can't be sure which branch it was because everything is clean (except the rock with algae on it I put in yesterday, too, but it's getting cleaner). I know the scud were exploring it, and I think they work faster because there are more of them than there are snails. As the plants recuperate and put out roots, I'll return them to the original tank. I am currently trying to decide how to introduce the scud to the big tank, too. It probably already has some (it's hard to tell in the beige-colored landscape rocks), but either not enough to do a good job keeping down the algae, or my tetras and/or the pygmy cories (see pic at your left) are eating the little scud. If I can keep the scud alive and going in the one-quart container, I'll probably wind up siphoning some out and squirting them into the 10G to see what happens. Maybe they'll they thrive, eat the algae and left-over food/old leaves, and the fish will control any population boom.
I don't know if you can buy scud/Gammeris, or if you just have to hope you get some by (lucky) mistake.
I don't know if you can buy scud/Gammeris, or if you just have to hope you get some by (lucky) mistake.
