The best algae cleaner for your planted tank

[the loach]

I have no algae eaters, and no algae. It is just a matter of having enough plants for your fishload, and proper lighting/water conditions for the plants. The thing that most people can't grasp is "algae eaters" produce more waste as was required for the algae they ate to grow, they are very particular in the algae they eat. For instance no animal will eat the hard green spot algae on your glass.
Small amounts of green algae are normal in an aquarium, and like plants they use nitrate and produce oxygen.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Hmm.........

One of the most popular algae eating snails are the Nerite Snails. With their beautiful zebra like shell, and their huge appetite for algae, it’s no surprise why these little gems are as common as they are. Nerite Snails are known to eat every type of algae found in a freshwater aquarium, including the harder to eradicate ones such as Green Spot Algae and Green Beard Algae. They are bottom dwellers as well, so they can also help clean your substrate.

Bolding added by me. From https://fishkeepingadvice.com/12-best-algae-eaters/

Aquatic plants prefer ammonium over nitrate. When ammonium is lacking, they can use nitrate. However, once the nitrate is inside the plant, it has to run the nitrogen cycle backwards turning the nitrate back into ammonia to use it. This is a less efficient process than using ammonium directly. The next thing to realize is that the reason nirtate levels are low to absent in well planted tanks is not that the plants use it, but that when they use the ammonium, there is neither nitrite nor nitrate produced. This is only done by the bacteria and archaea in a tank. And no matter how many plants are in a tank, there will always be some amount of nitrifying bacteria as well. The bacteria us ammonia as NH3 while the plants use ammonium as NH4.

What this means is one can have a fully cycled tank with a full load of fish and no live plants present. On the other hand, any planted tank, no atter how many plants it comtains will always have some amount of nitrifying bacteria. Most interstingly, plants with roots in anaerobic parts of the substrate will trans port oxygen down to their roots and release it to create aerobic area. This allows for aerobic ammonia creation which then foster nitrifiers which will use some part of the ammonia while the plants gets most of it. This in turn fosters anaerobic areas above and below the aerobic zone created by the plant and the nitrate is then processed in these areas. Have a quick read here Nitrification and denitrification in the rhizosphere of the aquatic macrophyte Lobelia dortmanna L.

Want a great way to get your small schooling fish to school more- throw an SAE or two into the tank. SAEs wont harm the schoolers but will be seen as enough of a threat to cause the schoolers to stay schooled a lot of the time.






Another

 

[the loach]

I've been keeping Nerites for almost 2 decades, they're beautiful and do a nice job at keeping glass clean as good as possible, but they don't eat hard green spot algae. No BGA either.
Are you in retail or selling livestock? Your recommendations are eerily similar to what they have been saying for decades to get people more "algae eaters", it just ain't CAE and giant pleco's no more.

Let's just not fool people to believe they need "algae eaters" or other "clean up fish"; to answer the question of this topic; the best algae cleaner for your planted tank is you.

 

[fishorama]

I kept a small SAE in a modestly planted tank & it did graze on algae of a few types. But as it hit 3.5-4 inches, it ate much more fish food than algae & became quite chubby. I don't think I'd keep just 1 again & not in less than a 4ft tank; mine was a 75g. 5-6 inch torpedo shaped fish can swim pretty fast & may tend to jump in a smaller or shallower tank. Even my fat 1 could get moving at times.

I wonder in the "plant eating SAE" was really a CAE. There's a fish that should come with warnings! I see them much less lately, maybe the lfs +/or suppliers have finally got the message?

I actually try to have a few types of algae in my "hillstream" tank for my loaches & gobies to graze on. They nibble at GSA but certainly don't control it...that's what husbands with razor blades are for, lol.

 

[FreshyFresh]

30gal is just to small to add more bio load for the purpose of algae control or clean up. Like said, it's easier to control the algae by reducing the lights on time, lighter feedings, more water changes.

As much as I loved my SAEs the years I had them, they did skim all surfaces almost constantly, but I never noticed any removal. Just like fishorama, my SAEs much preferred any food added to the tank. They are total hogs.

The best hardscape "cleaner" I've experienced is my bristlenose plecos. They've even cleaned the back glass spotless. This is an area I never manually clean. The problem with this type of pleco is, if you've got a male and female, you are going to eventually have more plecos than you want. They are poop machines. They eat constantly and create than much waste.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

A few comments.

-I am always willing to be shown I am mistaken about something. But saying nerites will not ever eat green spot is not yet one of them.

-I am not in retail, however, I do breed and sell a few of the rarer B&W Hypancistrus (zebra, L236, L173 and 173b). I have been doing this for about 12 years now. Before that, I learned from spawning tank strains of bristlenose. None of the plecos I now spawn eat algae. Some will eat snails, however. The Hypans pay for my fish keeping hobby.

-SAE will eat all sorts of algae and, yes, they will eat about any food one adds to a tank. Therefore, when one wants to use them to battle an algae outbreak, stop feeding the tank and the SAE wiil do their stuff.

-I ran a high tech pressurized co2 added tank for 10+ years. It used power compact fluors. Early on I had to be budget conscious and PC bulbs are pricey, so I did not have any spares on the shelf. I had a bulb go out and lost 1/4 of the light over the tank for 5 days before the new bulb arrived. Algae went nuts fast. I also had a co2 leak which caused it to run out. Again a big algae outbreak. While I did rectify the mechanical issues, I also had to deal with bad algae outbreaks, one was BBA which is impossible to remove from dwarf hair grass. My solution was to collect the SAEs from all my tanks and put them into the planted tank. I stopped feeding the tank and the SAEs cleared the BBA pretty fast. That was the source of the SAE pic I posted in this thread. The point is that not all algae outbreaks happen because of fish keeper "error." In addition, the swordtails i have in that tank also began eating BBA when the food stopped being added.

-I am not a big invert person. I have only two types of snails in any of my tanks- pest pond snails and assassins to take care of them. While nerites may not prefer spot algae, that doesn't mean they never eat it. Most cases are not all cases.

Nerite snails prefer specific types of algae like soft film algae and soft green algae. They will also eat soft brown algae and brown diatoms. In fact, nerite snails reportedly will eat just about any type of algae, but they tend to shy away from green spot algae in most cases.

from https://iere.org/nerite-snail/

-This link will take one to the search results on YouTube which supposedly show nerites eating green spot. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nerite+snail+eating+green+spot+algae

-Very few animals will willingly starve themselves to death. If one has nerites in a tank which has only green spot and no other types of algae, and food is not being added to the tank, I have a hunch nerites would indeed eat green spot. I could be wrong.

 

[fishorama]

I only had a nerite snail once for a very short time but it did, as I recall, eat some GSA...Not very good at removing all of it, lol. There were snail trails along the glass, so, while I went off on vacation, it did have some food & other algae/auf wuchs on plants. But sadly, it did not survive my trip. I'm not sure what happened, I kept it's pretty shell.

I've also used & occasionally still dose Seachem Excel in 1 tank. Like any animal answer, it helps, but doesn't eliminate all algae. Some plants don't react well to it. I actually like (gasp!) a small amount of some algae in my tanks. They, along with "critters" in the biofilm, provide food for some fish & fry. Like Joel, I never clean the back of my tanks or rarely the sides. I think I hate most moss as much a most algae, but I always have some...

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I asked a good friend who is also an invert pro about this issue. She told me she has never seen nerites eat GSA. However, she also did not tell me that they never do so. This still leaves me thinking that they do not like GSA but that in some infrequent situations they will eat it. In the end this would indicate to me that a single edge razor or stainless steel aglae scraper blade is indeed the best method for dealing with green spot algae.

 

[fishorama]

I agree TTA, nothing like a razor blade on GSA, especially since I don't have to do it, lol. Adding animals is not always the best answer to a problem.

 

[lampro]

as long as you have light some sort of algae will eventually grow when your tank get older...
sorry what is GSA ?
what is the most efficient algae eater then? i go with amano shrimp, nerite snail and golden algae eater