i want algae

Out of curiousity, why do you not want to buy algae wafers? A $3 bag will literally last months for just a few otos - and you've already spent that on one bottle of Leaf Zone.

Also, even otos with some diatomous or soft algae should still be supplemented with wafers and fresh vegetable matter. And that can just be leftover veggie scraps from what you eat yourself (clean, of course!).

Plus, as someone wisely said, otos do not just eat any algae. They eat only certain types of soft algae. You can't really control what it is you will get if you manage to gain an imbalance in your tank. It seems like you're making this a lot more effort on yourself than it should be.

And moving the fish out seems like undue stress to the fish.

Is there something I'm missing?
 
Last edited:
i do feed vegetables to my otos also. I have a veggie flake i make by pureeing cucumber peas and lettuce and then dehydrating. My otos enjoy this as does my snail. But i want some real algae for them also. I do understand that i may not get the right kind and i that case i hope my snail will eat the other kinds. He is a golden apple snail, i think, and he is enourmous. Anyways, I had to by the leafzone anyways, for my other tank which is planted. I was hoping this might do the trick without having to get the algae wafers.
 
Algae isn't that hard to grow... really. I have brown algae in my toilet for pete's sake! This is what I get for dumping water changes into the toilet...
 
Yea, I'm pretty embarrassed about it. I would like to consider dechlorinating it and making it my new fish tank and stick some otos in there, but that's not the best choice IMO... :D

Just leave the light on for 3 days straight and put your fish somewhere else in the mean time.
 
The trouble, oddball, in doing that, is that once the fish are back in, I presume you won't leave the light on 24 hours a day. You have not caused a longterm imbalance. You've temporarily altered the environment. A few days after the fish are back, the algae will be gone and you'll be back to square one. Its the same thing as with Algae erradicators but in reverse. And its foolish to be moving fish in and out of a tank all the time just to maybe get a little algae. I mean, the guy could have really lean water with not a whole lot of nutrients in it to begin with.
 
Oddball~ said:
Yea, I'm pretty embarrassed about it. I would like to consider dechlorinating it and making it my new fish tank and stick some otos in there, but that's not the best choice IMO... :D

Just leave the light on for 3 days straight and put your fish somewhere else in the mean time.

here's to dallas water :dance:

(I'm originally from Dallas)
 
AquariaCentral.com