What kind of fish do you use for algae control?

pcpaulinoii

AC Members
Feb 20, 2008
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San Diego, CA
I am going to set up a 20 gallon tank with artificial driftwood and plants with some cardinal tetras for my office but unsure on what kind of fish to use for algae control... what do you use? I am looking for something that remains relatively small (unlike the pleco).
 
For a new tank, you will not need anything for algae control for quite some time. IME, the best for eating algae are otos or Siamese Algae Eaters, but it depends what kind of algae you have....which is why you might want to wait until your tank is established and you know what kind of algae you have. If you do get 'algae eaters' right away, make sure you feed them algae wafers and veggies -- even in a long-established tank with lots of algae, they will quickly eat it all, and as they are herbivores will starve to death without veggie/algae based food.
 
Albino BN pleco. They stay smaller than most others. Have been algae-free since getting it.
 
I have several otos but plenty of algae to go around. You have to bear in mind that they eat constantly so, as Lucy stated above, need to be in an established tank with enough algae to feed them well.
 
well, i put excel in my 10 gallon the other day and the algae disappeared ... I really thought that was weird!!
 
I use otos for the activity and small size, also INVERTS!!!!. You should get some cherries off of msjinks and maybe a purple brigs snail! Doesnt that sound way better than a "pleco" ugh lol.

Not trying to convert tooo much j/k.

But seriously your ONLY option is shrimp and some brigs snail.
 
Algae scraper.

Otos like new algae and mine dont go after anything green, mostly diatoms which will go away on their own. Bn plecs are ok but IME the were lazy and ate the wafers over any algae I had. Never had SAE's but you dont really have a big enough tank.

I would go for some snails or shrimp or just a plain ol' algae scraper
 
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