Encourage your SAE to eat algae

[rocketfu]

I noticed my SAE's would eat the flake food i fed the other fish. I never saw the 3 of them ever eating algae. They just played and chased each other around the tank. After I switched to TetraCichlid Mini granules (not a plug, just want to make sure anyone could find this), I noticed they would try to eat the granules like the other fish, but were met with no success. My apisto's and dwarf neon rainbowfish loved the mini granules and now the SAE's don't do anything except hunt algae.

 

[7Enigma]

Keep an eye out for them though. Maybe substitute flakes once a week to make sure they are getting a proper diet. SAE's might be omnivores, if so they need protien and fat just like us. I've heard of the starve "diet" to make some algae eaters work most effectively, but don't totally like the idea of just not feeding them. If you give the flake food at least once a week and keep an eye on their behavior and body size/shape, you'll get the best of both worlds (healthy and cleaning up the tank).

 

[malkore]

SAE's don't eat every kind of algae either. they tend to go for fluffy green algae or beard algae. they won't touch brown diatoms or green spot.

 

[fprintf]

SAE's don't eat every kind of algae either. they tend to go for fluffy green algae or beard algae. they won't touch brown diatoms or green spot.

Don't I know it! My tank has been greenless for several months since the introduction of some SAEs. Unfortunately most everything now has some black all over it including my nice lake rock.

 

[jcarlilesiu]

probably BBA... i have it growing on the bottom portions of my driftwood now and i recently got 3 SAE. They are going to town on my green carpet algea, however havn't touched the BBA yet.

 

[pentiumburner]

My understanding too is that once they are adults they eat very little algae but when juvenile eat quite a bit.

 

[Wizzard~Of~Ozz]

That would be Chinese Algae Eaters, SAE eat algae forever..

Mine plowed through my BBA then cleaned the leaves of the residue.. absolutely amazing. The oto's are working overtime on spot algae, but I don't think they are winning (I'm sorta procrastinating adding phosphate..)

 

[7Enigma]

Wizzard~Of~Ozz,

My Oto's don't seem to touch the green spot algae! I have it on 1 side of the tank that had a CF light shining through the side of the tank, and it seems like the Oto's (I now have 4 for my 20gallon) just ignore these clearly visible spots and instead go to the leaves, pots, and to my eyes completely clean glass (I know there's stuff there but wouldn't you want a big piece of algae?). I didn't know quite how much there was in my tank until yesterday when I went to add all the plants czcz sent me. With my fingers the left glass wall felt like brail!

I also thought I had a very mild case of BBA, but now from the sypmtoms it might be brush algae. I have very dark (almost black) outlines around the plant leaves of my anubais, the rhizome is almost black (but I can tell its superficial and not root rot). I also have it growing on my terra cotta pots. I tried to remove this stuff before from the pots but the pores in the ceramic made it impossible.

 

[Wizzard~Of~Ozz]

Run your terracotta pots under very hot water, allow to cool and put it back in the tank. The algae will be dead.

The oto's go after spot algae on the leaves of anubias and such, but they cannot win (I don't think they have the ability to remove it)

 

[7Enigma]

I did the hot water trick a week or so ago when I upgraded to high light. I figure the combination of scalding water, adding to that the chlorine in the tap water, and the scrubbing with my fingers killed it. Seems like more is growing in its place however.

And yeah my anubias leaves not only have that black substance on the edges of the leaves, but also some green spot algae on the face of the leaves itself (which really ticks me off).

 

[jcarlilesiu]

7enigma... thats the same type of algae i have, and im pretty sure that it is BBA, grows in little "tufts" on my driftwood and around the edges of my leaves. I have read previously that you were doing the dosing that increases phosphates to higher levels, I forget the name of this "experiement". I recently have tried this as well, dosing phosphates to around 2 ppm, and maintaining 20 ppm nitrate. I wonder if this could be the cause.

Maybe the SAE prefer the green algae over the black stuff, so we will see when they run out of green if they head over to the black. Im keeping my fingers crossed because the wood the algae is growing on is pretty much supporting all kinds of rocks and plants in the tank with make shift walls, as well as java moss growing across multiple items including the wood. Taking it out would be detrimental to my aquascaping.

For now I plan on reducing phosphates while increasing CO2 to see if that assists in the dying of this stuff. Its a bear and doesn't come off easily at all. It was growing on the discharge of my bio-wheel water fall, and hot water and my finger nail did the trick, but off of pourous wood, i have no idea how to handle that.

 

[7Enigma]

Yeah that was me. Prior to recieving the test kits for phosphate and hardness I was blindly dosing what I thought to be small amounts. I had mixed up the K and PO4 amounts and instead of adding a small amount of phoshate and a large amount of potassium, I switched them up. I also naturally have about 0.5ppm of phosphate in my tap water, so even after a couple water changes I still had over 5ppm. I now have about 2-3ppm of phosphate and about 15-20nitrAte so I'm still a bit low on that ratio. I have a schedule 25-50% PWC (depending on my mood ) after work today which should bring the phosphate down some more.

I am having a hard time deciding whether it is BBA only because the stuff in my tank does not fit the description (doesn't appear fuzzy or tufts), it just looks like you took a magic marker and outlined the leaves. The rhizome does have a bit more fuzziness to it, but from what I've read it sounds more like brush algae than BBA.

I'll see if I can get a picture when I get home (I might be removing one of the anubias leaves so I can get a good macro shot of it).

Just found this on the net (some photos of algae):

http://www.floridadriftwood.com/algae_identification.html

I assume BBA is not green?

 

[jcarlilesiu]

the link that you showed what I have as the last one... "brush algae" and is black in color. Though mine isn't nearly that bad, it is growing at a pretty quick rate.

 

[7Enigma]

That's what I'm thinking as well in my tank. Though the more I read about the different types of algae the more I'm leaning back to the BBA. Apparently this comes in different strains, from bright green, to dark brown to black. Mine is definately very dark brown or black, so it could be either.

Fortunately if it is BBA and due to my high phosphates, hopefully after the water change the levels will be low enough that it should not spread. I'll be pruning the leaves that have a large amount of this off as more sprout (this is almost exclusively on my java fern and anubias). It will be very easy to remove the java fern leaves since they grow quickly in my tank, but the anubias grows so much slower that I might just keep the leaves if they do not progressively get worse.

EDIT:

And it continues. So here is another shot of what is listed on the site as brush algae, but the title of the image looks to be BBA (I'm hoping its BBA but just placed under the wrong area). This looks almost EXACTLY like what is on my plants, just to a lesser degree.

 

[jcarlilesiu]

Yeah that is not what i have, its def. brush algae... i have no idea how to get rid of that