Good Fish For Cleaning Plants?

Good work!

I mean ONLY algae in the sense that they won't destroy my plants. I'm still in the middle of a soft green algae bloom. Unfortunately, it made it to my plants which are delicate as it is already. There has been some mention of hand cleaning plants, but again no articles or threads on the topic, wouldn't know how to go about it. Which is why I was leaning more towards a natural route cause hand cleaning plants sounds slightly dangerous, atleast to me. I really would like a strive for a well balanced eco-system, not because I'm trying to get out of maintenance, but just so I have the best possible environment pets.
 
Oto's aren't as efficient algae eaters as people make them out to be, in my experience. Mine won't touch anything that is hard (like GSA), hairy, or stringy. I've also heard otos are picky about the age of the algae, preferring new over old, established algae. I've only seen mine go after diatoms but after that they required pretty much full on prepared foods. I would highly suggest culturing your own algae, because there's no guarantee they'll eat what you have.

If you are looking for a balanced setup, which is always a great thing to strive towards, what is your lighting like? Any fertilizer supplecments? Co2?

The most common causes of algae is too much light and too many nutrients.
 
I've only seen otos eat algae that I could have cleared myself.
Best fish for algae control are the siamaese algae eaters. After that, small plecos. Amano shrimp. A snail army.
Control - try Flourish Excel if you don't have vals. Make sure your light bulbs aren't old. Test for phosphate.


Unrelated question - why does everyone keep using apostrophe-s at the end of a plural word? It's really starting to drive me nut's.
 
echoofformless said:
I've only seen otos eat algae that I could have cleared myself.
Best fish for algae control are the siamaese algae eaters. After that, small plecos. Amano shrimp. A snail army.
Control - try Flourish Excel if you don't have vals. Make sure your light bulbs aren't old. Test for phosphate.


Unrelated question - why does everyone keep using apostrophe-s at the end of a plural word? It's really starting to drive me nut's.
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Oto's otos' otos's...IDK just how I typed it.
 
Bulbs are new. I'm in the middle of my first cycle, specifically Nitrite at the moment, which I would imagine is the source for the algae bloom. I really try to leave the lights on only 12 hours, however it will often creep in the 14 hour range. No CO2, but I do low doses of flourish as my plants had a real difficult time getting off the ground. They're good now though and rockin pretty strong. Lighting is fairly standard, 30gal with 50w lighting.
 
nicshoe18 said:
I really try to leave the lights on only 12 hours, however it will often creep in the 14 hour range.
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It can be hard... I leave for work at 6:30 so turn the lights on before I leave... If I were to turn them off at 6:30 in the evening I'd only see the aquarium and the fish with the lights on for a very short time. (especially nights I go to the gym after work).


I think I'm going to have to buy a cheap timer- might be a good idea for you too if controlling length of light is hard.
 
echoofformless said:
I've only seen otos eat algae that I could have cleared myself.
Best fish for algae control are the siamaese algae eaters. After that, small plecos. Amano shrimp. A snail army.
Control - try Flourish Excel if you don't have vals. Make sure your light bulbs aren't old. Test for phosphate.


Unrelated question - why does everyone keep using apostrophe-s at the end of a plural word? It's really starting to drive me nut's.
Click to expand...

One of my pet hates as well, but what can you do?
 
Snails get my vote as always. My own nerites cleaned up the BBA, diatoms and green spot algae for me efficiently even though I intended to buy the snails as part of my collection rather than as janitors. I prefer my tank loaded with algae but somehow, I cannot maintain it that way anymore since my snails are effectively consuming any algal growth. Even the mystery snails consume the hair algae in a flash.
 
nicshoe18 said:
Bulbs are new. I'm in the middle of my first cycle, specifically Nitrite at the moment, which I would imagine is the source for the algae bloom. I really try to leave the lights on only 12 hours, however it will often creep in the 14 hour range. No CO2, but I do low doses of flourish as my plants had a real difficult time getting off the ground. They're good now though and rockin pretty strong. Lighting is fairly standard, 30gal with 50w lighting.
Click to expand...
12 hours is a long time even for a planted tank. Try going to only 8-10 hours a day.
 
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