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Home > Tropical Fish

Algae Loaches for Tropical Fishtanks

After having my tropical fish tank up and running for a month or so I noticed that the glass was becoming covered in a fair amount of algae. This was proving a problem while photographing my fish. Manually scraping it off was getting increasingly time consuming so I looked to a biological solution to the problem.

A really effective algae control in fish tanks is to get a Plecostomus Catfish (Pleco) but these grow very large. I saw some algae loaches (Gyrinocheilus aymonieri, also known as the sucking loach)  in my local fish shop which seemed to be good alternatives.

As soon as I introduced them to the tank they started scraping the algae off the tank. With occasional manual scraping of algae, the tank now looks much better. They also like algal wafers (the picture below shows an algae loach eating a wafer).

My only concern is that they grow quite large and are less effective at algal control when adult sized. They also scare other fish sometimes. I hope this does not happen!

Algae Loach (Gyrinocheilus aymonieri - sucking loach)

Algae Loach (Gyrinocheilus aymonieri - sucking loach) resting on an aquarium plant

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