SAE, CAE, and the flying fox

Hmm, I've never been tempted to keep a CAE, and can never find SAE, but I can vouch for the flying foxes. Mine is very entertaining and active during the day. He's always cleaning my plant leaves as well The colouring on them is pretty spiffy, but mostly they are just plain fun to watch.

CAEs do get kind of aggressive as they get older, SAEs will eat certain types of common plants as well as the hair algae that grows in your tank. I haven't personally kept flying foxes so I can't really give you any advice there.

I have six flying foxes in three tanks. I have never seen the slightest sign of aggression toward any other fish. They are extremely active pretty much all of the time during the day and do just an OK job on the algae. They look almost identical to SAEs. The only caution about flying foxes is that you want to have either one, or three+ in a tank. If you have two, they can be aggressive toward each other.

As you noted, SAEs have the reputation of being the best of the three when it comes to algae but like you, I have had a hard time locating them. I just this last weekend located an LFS that had them in stock and supposedly has them on a regular basis. If you can't find them, you can order them online at http://www.azgardens.com/fish_snails.php. I've never kept SAEs so I can't give you any first hand experience. SAEs are supposed to be quite peaceful but I have read some posts on the boards by folks who have had problems with them attaching to other fish.

I've also never kept CAEs but I've read enough negative things about them that I'm not interested. Young CAEs are supposed to be pretty good algae eaters but they get lazy when they mature and they have a nasty habit of attaching themselves to broad-sided fish like angels and eating their slime coat. This seems to be the rule rather than the exception with CAEs. That eventually results in the death of the poor victim.

If you decide to go with the flying fox, make sure that you're getting the real deal. The flying fox, SAE, and false siamensis are very similar and you have to look closely to make sure which one you're getting. The site below is a good one for helping you tell the difference.

http://www.bettastarz.com/sae.htm

Good luck!!

1. Sounds about right.

2. Based solely on algae eating, SAE's are clearly superior. CAE's do seem to be interesting fish and they look quite a bit different, though I've never kept them.

3. SAE's will scour every inch of your tank. Mine will even swim upside down along the bottom of my crypto's looking for algae.

4. Don't know much about flying foxes, apart from telling them apart from SAE's.

5. My SAE's are active during the day. Of my two, one (who died of ich ) was active all the time and didn't seem to be bothered by my movement. My other SAE seems to think he's one of my Zebra Loaches, so he spends most of his time with my loaches (a lot of hiding is involved).

6. Actually, SAE's are social and prefer to be in groups. I've never tried combining them with flying foxes (Hmm... I seem to remember Flying Foxes being territorial, hopefully someone else can provide more info on them.). CAE's are actually very different fish that just happen to have a similar name. I don't think your fish would get too confused by their names, so I don't think keeping them with foxes or SAE's would be any riskier then any other fish you might have.

Can't seem to put my mouse on it right now but I have read posts of folks who claim they have had ill-behaved SAEs. From what I can tell, that would be the exception rather than the rule but...And I think we have to keep in mind that it can be difficult to distinguish SAEs from false siamensis which by all accounts are definitely aggressive so it could be a case of mis-identification as well.

i think an SAE, much like an oto, will only go after a fish if its feeling very underfed.

Dunno about the SAE, but the ottos and the flying foxes sure do! The ottos like veggies and algae wafers, the foxes seem to eat almost anything although they seem to have a preference for algae wafers and Hikari Micromini.