Otto Bioload?

otos eat brown algae and soft green slime algae. they will not touch hair, red, black, staghorn, brush, beard, etc. i have 3 otos in my 20g tank and they have kept it totally free of brown and green slime algae, but i am now fighting hair algae and they are no help at all. however, i love them anyway because they are just adorable, funny, cute little fishes all on their own.
 
Yeah, I know that they don't tackle all kinds of algae, but they are having fun (as far as I can tell), so all is good. I have two large lava rocks in the tank, and they have a nice low-level coating of algae. I don't mind this, as it makes the tank with fake decorations look more "alive".
 
The first line of defense against algae is good tank maintanence, but algae eaters can be quite beneficial, especially in getting the algae that's difficult to reach--on rocks, plants etc.

I've got a planted tank that unfortunately can't help but get direct sunlight part of the day. The only places to put a tank in this house with no direct sunlight at all are places I'm never at, which defeats the whole point of a tank.

Rocks and such I can pull out and scrub, plants are harder. My anubis nana were starting to get a heavy algae growth so, while I'm waiting for oto's to be back in stock in my area (six stores-no oto's--ARGH!), I picked up a very young chinese algae eater. In the past couple days he's done a lovely job of cleaning the algae off my leaf margins and surfaces. As soon as the oto's are in stock, I'll be getting 3-4 min. to keep up the job. (The CAE will
be going bye-bye as soon as the oto's are available-though I dread the prospect of trying to catch the sucker!)
 
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