# Algae eating clean up crew



## smsjazz81 (Jul 16, 2009)

I have a 55 gallon planted tank and have some hair algae, and green spot algae. I was wondering what type of fish or shrimp eat these two types of algae? I have about 9 otocinclus and a gold nugget (L-81) Pleco but they haven't touched it. Also, has anyone ever heard of either gold nugget or adonis plecos eating shrimp or any type of pleco for that matter? I wouldn't wanna spend money on shrimp if they were gonna be eaten by a 6" pleco. I've heard some plecos have been know to be carnivorous.
One more question. Do wood/bamboo shrimp eat any type of algae?
Thanks


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## brendan_1001 (Feb 17, 2009)

I've not really noticed my otos ever eating hair algae, they don't have the right mouth for it. Bamboo/wood shrimp are filter feeders and so will not help you at all. Siamese (definately do NOT get Chinese) algae eaters are good for this algae. Just be careful what you buy, a lot of places pass off fish such as flying foxes as SAEs. Or you could just figure out what your underlying problem is that's causing the algae and use spot treatments of hydrogen peroxide or excel to deal with what you already have.


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## smsjazz81 (Jul 16, 2009)

They do and have done a great job with the brown algae in my tanks but I haven't seen the even go near the green spot or hair algae.

I read a couple articles in TFH and have never seen an article stating that they eat the algae types. All of them just mention that they do a great job on brown algae.


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## Chrisinator (Jun 5, 2008)

Nerite Snails might work.


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## JoraaÑ (Jun 29, 2009)

get amano shrimp and SAE!! increase your temp to 80 degree slowly to boost SAE to act fast....it will be gone in 2-3 days!!!


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## tetraphonic (Feb 7, 2010)

Not sure if this will help you/your tank/situation, but, from my experience:
In my heavily planted 55g, low tech tank, no Co2, I recently added 10+ red cherry shrimp and they eliminated the hair algae on a newly introduced E. Uruguayensis sword plant within days (the pond snails that hitch-hicked in with it are another issue.... ugh :/).

Also, as an experiment, I purposely added a piece of driftwood with an anubia that had been accumulating algae for about six months from another tank that had some slimy green algae on the leaves to see what they would do.... they polished it off all of the top leaves in two weeks. Now the bottom leaves are beginning to clean up, too, after I added 3 otos. (Not yet sure if it's the shrimp or the otos, or both, that are cleaning up the bottom leaves).

Unfortunately, I've heard that plecos will eat the shrimp, but I would like to know more about this, too. Maybe someone else will chime in here about it.
I am currently trying to find a small loach/snail eater that won't hurt the shrimp, but, haven't had any luck with that as yet.

The otos won't hurt shrimp at all. What other fish do you have in your tank besides the pleco & otos? Perhaps you could move your pleco to another tank while you experiment with shrimps/otos?
Good luck!


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## smsjazz81 (Jul 16, 2009)

I currently have
9 oto's
5 tiger barbs
5 serpae tetras
8 harlequin rasboras
L-81 Pleco
2 bamboo shrimp
1 Pictus catfish (soon to be moving to another tank)

It's a little strain of a bio-load but it's well established and I'm running a rena XP3


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