feed your fish pellet food and the sae's mouth is physically too small to
eat the food...and thus they are forced to continue to eat algae

"Rick" wrote in message
a...

"Blake" wrote in message
...
I've found a website to buy the true SAE, but they're recommending 1 per
5g.
This seems a bit much to me... I've got a 155g planted aquarium, so
that'd
be an awful lot of SAE's. Right now, I've got two chinese algae eaters,
a
pl*co, some pearl gourami's, rosy barbs, rainbow fish, diamond tetras, a
few
mollies, and assorted small tetras. I'd like to get some SAE's and
possibly
transfer one of the Chinese guys over to a smaller tank, but do I really
need 31??



I have 5 in my 77g heavily planted tank along with 4 Otto's and some
livebearers and one large pleco. They do a reasonable job of keeping the
algae under control. The SAE's are only good when they are small. They
quickly adapt to flake food and won't touch the algae.

Rick