Are there any small herbivorous fish?

[Banafish]

So far I have not come across any small herbivorous fish so I am interested if there are any?

 

[Colin_T]

Algae eaters are commonly available from pet shops. Smaller types include bristlenose catfish, Peckoltias, Farlowella sp, Otocinclus are one of the smallest. These are all software fishes.

Avoid the Chinese algae eater because they grow big and are mean.

If you have hard water, there are lots of African Rift Lake cichlids from Lake Malawi that graze on algae. Most grow to about 4-6 inches and many aren't peaceful. But there are a few nice ones.

 

[GaryE]

With small fish, which to me means 5-6 cm, you're more likely to find detritivores. They'll eat plant matter, debris, small creatures in the mix, etc. Most Characins, the family tetras are in, are detritus eaters. They'll eat some insects, but most of what they get is plant matter.

You'll get some specialists like Otocinclus, but smaller fish tend to grab what they can get.

On land, we don't get the same processes we see in water, and herbivores, carnivores and omnivores are our main divisions. Edible debris is part of every body of water, plus there are scale and fin eaters, eye eaters, poop eaters, snail specialists, bug, fish, algae, debris, etc eaters. I recently spent a couple of weeks in central Africa, crossing and re-crossing the equator, and fished for tiny fish in close to 20 different streams or creeks. I saw a few Anubias plants (I could count the total on my fingers), a Vallisneria type thing in one place, and a riccia type floating plant in one other. Any small fish that was a straight herbivore would have starved - aquatic plants were very rare.

 

[Magnum Man]

You got responses from 2 very knowledgeable members, so not much to add, other that Oto’s are about the smallest, and they pretty much only eat algae and bio films