Re: Algae eater

To: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
Subject: Re: Algae eater
From: Liisa Sarakontu <lsarakon at hila_hut.fi>
Date: Mon, 16 Oct 1995 22:25:39 +0200 (EET)
In-Reply-To: <199510160739.DAA05625 at looney_actwin.com>

kbkoh wrote:
> An article in October's AFM rated Ancistrus sp. as highest in term of 
> elgae eating fervour. Anybody on the list having Ancistrus can confirm 
> this? Having fail to locate otto and SAE so far, I'm going to add this 
> species into my "search" list. Thanks.

I have never (yet) owned any other suckermouth cats than bristlenoses,
so I can't compare them from my own experiences.  I have three
"spotted bristlenoses", Ancistrus sp. cf. temminckii and I'm very happy
with their algae eating abilities.  They keep the glasses of my 150 liter
tank clean - I had to scrape the glasses at least once a month before I got
them, and now I have to scrape only few green spots every few months.

My Ancistrus eat only some soft floating plants like duckweed and frogbit
(Limnobium sp.) and leave all the others alone, but I have heard from
more than one tank owner that a lone Ancistrus has attacked plants, no
matter how much extra veggie food it is given.  In these cases they 
usually start with sword plants and might eat everything, even java fern.

Few SAEs (for red and soft green algae) and some bristlenoses (for harder
green algae types) make a nice tank cleaning team!  Some Ancistruses,
like this "spotted", are very easy to breed, so they should be rather
easily and cheaply available everywhere, where shops take home-bred
fishes for sale.

Liisa Sarakontu                     INTERNET:    lsarakon at hila_hut.fi
Helsinki University of Technology   WWW homepage http://www.hut.fi/~lsarakon/