Flying Fox

[Maxamus]

hias the title say im looking to get some algae eaters as i have algae growing in my tank. The guy at the LFS pointed out flying foxs i have read some info and some says they are bad and should be avoided while some sy they are great and reccommend them. In your opinion or from personal experience are they a good fish to go with my 2gold goramis 2 opaline gouramis 2 silver sharks.

Thanks all help appreciated

PS my tank is 130litres and i have been thinking of getting 3 platies for the tank will they go with my tank setup.

 

[The-Wolf]

why are you getting algae?
rather than buy a fish to do your work, try and find the reason for the algae in the first place
and sort it out. then you could purchase a fish to help keep it at bay.

some causes (list not exhaustive)
over feeding
poor housekeeping (not enough [volume or frequency or both] water changes)
high NO3 (can come directly out of tapwater)
high phosphates
too much light (light period is too long)
wrong kind of light (direct sunlight or wrong wavelength tubes)

 

[rdd1952]

As The Wolf mentioned, it's better to find the cause of the algae and fix it rather than getting fish as a remedy. Also, until you identify the type algae you have, you can't get the proper algae eater as different fish and shrimp eat different types of algae. Here is a link to a site that should help you ID your algae.

If you do however decide to get an AE, true flying foxes aren't the best algae eaters. There are 3 fish that look very similar but are quite different in the amount of algae they eat. Here is a link that gives good descriptions of each of them. The Siamese Algae eater is by far the best of the 3 but are sometimes hard to find. With your gouramis, definitely stay away from Chinese Algae eaters. They don't eat much algae and will definitely be a problem for your gouramis later on.