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My Albino Bristle-nose like the brown diatom algae in my new tank. They don't seem to go for the green algae. Is this normal?

mine ate the brown stuff before going after the green algae. Perfectly normal, I would say.

Particularly true if the green algae is just hard spot algae on the front of the tank. This type of algae will not be eaten by Ancistrus species.

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Mats

does anything eat spot algae? I used to grow it like crazy until I limited the light to 8 hrs. a day.

Chaetostoma sp. will eat it if there's nothing else left in the tank. But, they have specific water parameters that need to be adhered to: fast, cool(not too cool), clean and lots of rocks.

good to know...thanks! sounds like they'd be very useful in my goldfish tank, if I added a few more rocks.

are they sensitive to nitrates at all? mine rise to 20ppm each week before the 50% water change. I assume that this is tolerable, but they're fast river fish so....maybe not?

drgold wrote:good to know...thanks! sounds like they'd be very useful in my goldfish tank, if I added a few more rocks.

are they sensitive to nitrates at all? mine rise to 20ppm each week before the 50% water change. I assume that this is tolerable, but they're fast river fish so....maybe not?

20 ppm should be acceptable. I'd be more worried about the need for flowing water, which is generally not "compatible" with gold-fish, particularly not the long-finned varieties.

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Mats

You may want to research this a bit more: Chaetostoma sp. live in fast flowing, shallow rivers. I think that might be a bit of an issue for Goldfish.
Amanda