# are rosy barbs good for bba and hair algae?



## abc (May 18, 2004)

Just wondering if anyone has had any experience with rosy barbs eating bba and hair algae? They are $5 a piece, but worth it if they eat the hair algae. But I'm concerned that they won't stop with algae but will also start eating some of my plants.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks! abc


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## Brennor (Mar 8, 2004)

I found the following comments on http://badmanstropicalfish.com/profiles/profile33.html

From: Armi 
Date:11/17/2003 
Rosy Barbs are great if you have a black hair algae problem, I have 6 male rosy's who cleaned a 2 foot piece of wood covered in algae in 5 weeks. 

and from http://www.justbajan.com/pets/fish/species/rosybarb/
Feeding: Omnivorous. Will readily accept all types of live & prepared foods. Can be fed flakes, spirulina, lettuce, spinach, brine shrimp, freeze dried foods, mosquito larvae etc. Rosy Barbs eat very fast, so make sure your other fish get somthing to eat. They will often nip at plants. To keep Rosy Barbs from eating your plants, try feeding them spinach (soften the spinach in hot water). They will usually ignore the other plants and go for the spinach. 

After that I stopped searching. Too many sites about this fish 

Dave


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## Urkevitz (Jan 12, 2004)

I have 1 Rosy barb and it eats some of my plants. It seems to enjoy ripping off the leaves.


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## anonapersona (Oct 19, 2002)

Yes, yes, and yes. I had rosey barbs. They did eat hair algae. They ate the long hard black hairy algae. They worked on the BBA without making much progress. They bullied the cories out of their food, the cories died, perhaps due to hunger. I observed them eat new leaves of java fern and new leaves of anubias nana. I observed them eat MTS. I don' tknow if they ate other plants in the tank, the sunset hygro grew so fast it didnt' matter. I never noticed them bothering the crypts. I think the tore the Apong. ulvaceus for there were bits of it flotaing around. I tried to fill them up with steamed green lettuce before feeding the others but they didn't seem to ever turn down food, even with fresh lettuce hanging out the butt from eating so much it was still willing to hog the fish food. The plant eating started after I served steamed lettuce so maybe they wouldn't have attacked so much had I not taught them how.


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## abc (May 18, 2004)

Thanks for the posts. I will forgo getting rosy barbs. What's the point if they eat the very plants I'm trying to save from the algae? They sound like troublemakers. abc


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## anonapersona (Oct 19, 2002)

maybe you can rent one? Get one or two now, sell them back when they have tamed the algae. there is a long time between the destruction of the algae and the destruction of the plants.


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