Can I temporarily keep Chinese Algae Eater in cold water?

A

azaahp2

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Sep 27, 2020
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I have a beautiful and spirited little golden chinese algae eater - he's about 5cm long. I've had to remove him from my tank because he started attacking my Kribs - latching onto their sides and really wouldn't leave them alone. I can't put him in my other tank because it has guppy fry and I'm sure he'd eat them...

I put him in a temporary home-made 'breeding net' type of thing in one of my tanks and have spent the last few days trying to find him a new home without success.

I'm wondering if I can take him out of that tiny space and keep him in a large bucket until I can re-home him. It would at least give him a more normal space to move around in.

I'd use tank water so it would be about 25 deg C when I put it in there and would slowly cool to room temp of about 20C, 18C at the coolest.

I would do almost 100% change to new warm tank water every couple of days as it wouldn't have any filtration.

Have done some googling and can't really seem to find any answers on keeping them in cold water so hope someone here can help me... thanks in advance!

GoldenChineseAlgaeEater5.jpg
 
They get to 8 inches & don't mellow with age. I believe they can handle lowish temps...but maybe not a bucket for more than a few days. This is a very very short term answer.
 
The "Chinese" algae eater is not from China, and as such not a real tropical fish. Don't keep them in unheated tanks. However it does not and can not eat guppy fry. You can keep him in the guppy tank no problem. I have kept these fish for about 20 years with no problems. Are you feeding him enough?
They do get to about 7 inches however unlike Plecos these fish do grow slowly. If you want to rehome it contact the Ohio Fish Rescue on FB, they will send someone over at no cost.
 
Thanks for your replies. Great to know about the fry... although my guppy tank now has a sick krib in it so my hands are tied... I would like to keep him but I might have to drop him into a fish shop if I can find one that will take him.

Good question am I feeding him enough... I really don't know. I try very hard not to overfeed my fish - that was easy when I had two goldfish... now I have a number of bottom, middle and top dwellers it's a different story... LOL! He never used to bother with algae wafers but now I think he competes with the kribs on them which might be why he's starting to attack... I keep my tanks clean so probably not a lot of naturally occuring algae for him to find...

Any tips you can offer on making sure my fish get enough without overfeeding would be useful... I'm trying to figure this out for my other tank which contains 6 small Sterbai cories, 2 adult kribs, 4 penguin tetras and about half a doz male guppies...
 
So I have him in a plastic container - is it safe to put a heater in the plastic container as well or will warming the water leach chemicals out of the plastic and kill him...?
 
That won't be an issue cause you don't want to heat the water above like 75 degrees anyway ? But do make sure the container is cycled...
Have you fed him cucumber and zucchini and stuff, those are things that he loves to eat and there won't be any competition from the kribs. What size is the tank, and does it have a lot of hiding places?
 
The tank was 70L. Planted with spider driftwood, rocks etc. I also have a 160L I could try him in which is also planted with rocks, caves, driftwood etc. But I'm not so keep cos I'd probably have to take it all apart too catch him if I needed to get him back out again... He's so hard to catch! ?
 
I honestly would put the kribs in the bucket or put the guppy fry in the breeder net then put the Krib in guppy fry tank while fry in breeder net and Chinese algae eater in big tank
 
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