Algae Eater Recomendation

[Brujo]

im looking for some recommendations for algae eater for a 12 gallon eclipse system 12, the tank is lightly planted with one anubia nana, 2 java ferns, one frayed leaf java fern, a few microswords, and a lil plant that i found growing on a side of my house where the water pools that looks a lot like hemianthus cuba.

i currently have 3 male guppies that will be moved to the tank as well as adding 3 more male guppies, i will also be adding some cherry or amano shrimp.

i need an algae eater that can either be kept alone or in a same sex pair, i was considering a pomacea brisgesii snail, mostly looking for something to help keep the glass clean, i was also thinking about an oto.

what would you recommend as a hardy, small and cool algae eater?

 

[kelly528]

I really like nerites, they only eat green dust algae but other than that they are hands down the best algae eater on the planet! Very efficient lol... you would only need about 2 of them and they have a lower bioload than apple snails.

Another good option is the oto. I know they have a reputation for being somewhat delicate but mine have always gotten along just fine since I introduced them to a tank cycled for only about a month. The thing is that they eat almost exclusively algae (brown and GDA) so in stores they often starve for lack of algae. So by the time you bring it home what you have is an already delicate fish that hasn't eaten since it was shipped from the wholesaler. Now you can see why the success rate isn't so high with these guys acclimating!!!

If you wait til you LFS gets a shipment of otos and then buy a few 'fresh' ones (2 or 3 should do) you should have way better luck acclimating them.


You could also look into extremely small pleco species (who am I kidding otos ARE the smallest pleco species!) like perhaps the pitbull pleco... might be harder to come by but whatever floats your boat! The advantage would be that a 'real' pleco would probably be partial to detritus and leftover fish food too, which is nice because IME nothing can stink up a tank worse than leftover fish food. I swear it produces more ammonia than fish poop!

... and then you could always just get the shrimps and a mag-float for the glass lol.

 

[Brujo]

def getting shrimp, already have a mag float, im looking at making the glass cleaning more of a once a week thing, instead of 3 times a week,

so i can keep only 2 otos, cool not i gotta try to find someone that carried them near me

 

[kiriyama]

Would second the Nerite, I had a really bad algae problem in a newly set up small tank, I let it build up and spread over a few weeks, added a few Nerites and let them run riot on it......
Very efficient