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SAE dietary preferences
To address the question about whether SAEs will continuously eat algae, or
will ultimately develop a taste for flakes or other things I can say that
they will develop a taste for other things. Those other things include
just about anything you feed your fish with as well as your fine-leaved
plants. I have seen them nibble on Mayaca fluviatilis and they decimated
my Rotala wallichii; I had to pull the latter out. I would add that mine
(which are "real" SAEs so far as anybody can tell) ignore what we commonly
call hair algae, much to my dismay since this species of algae grows
inconveniantly at the base of Echinodorus tenellus in the foreground (and
so is hard to get out with a toothbrush).
Personally, I am not that impressed with the algae-eating behavior of SAEs
and wish there were more other alternatives. I also use Otocinclus and
ghost shrimp (which do eat hair algae to some extent), but they feed
differently than SAEs. Someone's comment that one needs to have a variety
of algae eaters is well taken.
The other thing I don't care for about SAEs is their tendency to get
territorial toward their own kind. I had three in a 20gal tank and the
slightly larger, and therefore dominant, one always chased the other two
away from food. They actually starved to death. Now the dominant one is
alone and will remain that way.
To say something nice about SAEs - they seem to graze very delicately over
the surface of leaves and perhaps they stop the adherence of algae from the
start; this would be impossible for the aquarist to see and is a very
useful thing since algae is stopped before it starts. So, I keep them
around. I do regret the demise of the Rotala though; it was a very nice
plant.
Roxanne Bittman
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Please note new email address:
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Roxanne Bittman, Botanist Natural Diversity Database
Phone: (916) 323-8970 __o CA Dept of Fish and Game
Fax: (916) 324-0475 _ \<_ 1220 S St
Internet rbittman at kirk_dfg.ca.gov ( )/( ) Sacramento, CA 95814
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