I'm wanting a good algae eater that will leave my plants alone but that can also get along with a red tail shark. I've heard that SAE's are out because of the shark but if someone has experience with them getting along fine then it doesn't matter. Another problems is i'd like to eater to be an asian because of the biotype. any suggestions would be great. thanks
Best Plant Safe algae eater
- Thread starter smithj427
- Start date
xaznkewlguyx;2967978; said:
Not Asian, and bushynose tend to eat leaves, at least Echinodorus
Try any Garra you can find. They're great algae eaters, even eat thread algae. I've had mine for 6 years
HarleyK
There's acutally two tanks I'm thinking of. My first one is my currently planted tank, that'll eventually be a SA biotype but right now it just has a bunch of randomly breeding guppies.
The other tank will be my planted Asian Biotype it has five scissortails and a red tail shark.
Not Asian, and bushynose tend to eat leaves, at least Echinodorus
Try any Garra you can find. They're great algae eaters, even eat thread algae. I've had mine for 6 years
HarleyK
At least someone reads the whole original post lol, I've heard of those. I'll have to look around for some. Thanks
I forgot the other question. What's the pH and KH? I'm trying to look into the stats to see if snails are a fine addition there. Nerite snails are far more efficient in consuming algae than anything else but they need hard alkaline water as they absorb plenty of calcium to keep their shells intact. Plenty of nerites are native of the Philippines and Indonesia. I keep 6-7 species of nerites currently and they consume any algae they find except BGA.
Actually I'm not sure of either the PH or the KH. I'm heading out right now so I'll check later tonight. There are a few snails running around but I don't know what they are they just came in on one of the plants. I'll try to get a pic for an Id tonight too. So thanks again until later
Your snails could be ramshorns (Planorbis sp.), pond snails (Lymnaea stagnalis), bladder snails (Physas sp.) or MTS (Melania/Thiara sp.).
So took some measurements today, pH is around 8, I don't have a KH tester but eventually I will one day. I also snapped a quick picture of one of the snails for an id.
Bladder snail (Physas sp.). 8.0 is great for snails. pH will not matter for fish but it matters for snails as acidic water erodes their shells.