I love rosy barbs

[Felf]

I posted this on AquariumPlantCentral as well but I want to see users here have to say. I bought 4 Rosy Barbs a few days ago and my clado is almost completely gone; I only see some left in the deepest patches of glosso. I upped the nitrate doseages, upped the frequency of PWCs, and spread out my lighting period so that helped as well. I resorted to buying them after doing a 5 day peroxide treatment and thinking i got rid of the clado but watched as it came back a week later. The only thing I don't like about the rosy barbs is that they're very jumpy and act as anti-dither fish

 

[dskidmore]

I have also found rosey barbs useful in algae control, although the harder to find ammano shrimp are better at it.

 

[Peyton]

I never knew they eat algae. What other types do they eat?

 

[dskidmore]

They will sometimes eat the various hair/thread/bush algaes. They won't do much for slime as far as I know.

 

[Felf]

i would get amanos but they're illegal here

 

[dskidmore]

Are there any local freshwater shrimp? Amanos get all the press, but they are hardly the only algae eating species.

 

[Jaybird]

I had rosy barbs and they did eat algae, but they seems so spasmodic. Well, it also seemed that my Oscar liked the rosy barbs too. He liked them a little too much. One by one they disappeared

 

[Felf]

Are there any local freshwater shrimp? Amanos get all the press, but they are hardly the only algae eating species

there are local shrimp which i buy but i'd like to see how they compare to amanos.

 

[dskidmore]

If I still had a hair algae problem, I'd offer to test them for you! When my amanos were still in QT, I pulled balls of hair algae out of the main tank and anchored them down near the driftwood the shrimp hung out on. Occasionally I'd see them picking at the algae during the day, but it was at night that large amounts of the stuff disapeared. I fed them as much algae as they would eat during QT, and they apparently kept up the habit when transfered to the main tank.

 

[Felf]

If I still had a hair algae problem, I'd offer to test them for you! When my amanos were still in QT, I pulled balls of hair algae out of the main tank and anchored them down near the driftwood the shrimp hung out on. Occasionally I'd see them picking at the algae during the day, but it was at night that large amounts of the stuff disapeared. I fed them as much algae as they would eat during QT, and they apparently kept up the habit when transfered to the main tank

like i said, "i would get amanos but they're illegal here" but i'm not certain. there's a ban list from our DLNR but i'm too lazy to look it up. i'll just assume they're illegal because no one sells them...

 

[dskidmore]

Get the local ones and try them out, unless they're ridiculously expensive. Put them in a lit QT with a mass of algae, and see if the algae gets bigger or smaller.

 

[Felf]

i've been getting them for a long time now, but i cant say whether they're doing a good job or not because of various other factors such as my tanks usually being 87-90 degrees during the summer thus making the algae explode, being lax on the weekly PWCs, having shrimp eating fish/algae eating fish in the same tank, etc. i've always had a shrimp only tank but it's by the window and i dont change the water regularly. the only other thing that i havent done is throw one or all of the various types of algae into a bare shrimp tank to see if they eat any of it. come to think of it...that would be a cool experiment

 

[dskidmore]

That would be cool. Let us know how it goes if you do it!

 

[SHIFT_Unique]

mollies are really good for eating algae also. my tank stays algae free because of my mollies. i have no need for a pleco