Algae Eater Behaviors
By emarie
@emarie (5442)
United States
February 27, 2011 2:32pm CST
My kids got a Chinese Algae Eater, http://animal-world.com/encyclo/fresh/cyprinids/chinesealgae.php ,over a year ago. It's pretty big and recently it's been doing some pretty weird stuff. We have one of those thermometers that sit in the gravel and is weighted on the bottom. Well, the Algae eater decided to dig it up and was constantly moving it around the tank. We were thinking "maybe he wants a toy?" I never thought fish played with 'toys'.
Now, he's dug away all the gravel on one side and pushed a cave there. Then he managed to stuck the thermometer inside the holes of the cave. Now it's stuck there and he's continuing to move the gravel over to one side of the tank.
We feel him twice a day because the algae tablets we have are pretty small. Is he just still hungry and digging up the gravel to clean? We have an under gravel filter so I was thinking all the algae was gathered in there. Anyone have any ideas?
1 response
@skinpro321 (26)
• United States
1 Mar 11
I would try to buy the bigger algae tablets like the spirulina ones. It's possible it's not getting enough food. Also maybe buy a little cave or hiding spot for it. Sometimes they like to hide and it digging and making a cave sounds like a sign. Good Luck!
@emarie (5442)
• United States
2 Mar 11
Thanks for the advice. He does have a cave, a big one he sits in all the time. But he's actually getting a little big for it. Since we had gotten a bigger tank for them, we decided to add the smaller cave my kids picked out just to have more things in there and that's the one he decides to dig up and shift around and now the thermometer is stuck in it. Before he placed it in the mini forest we have in the back, then he moved it out of there.
We had bigger tablets. But when I sent my husband to buy the tablets, he came home with the smaller ones...never send a man to do a woman's job..lol
But I'll try to feed him more, maybe 3 times a day with those tablets. I just didn't know if fishes had little play toys like dogs do because it seemed like he liked playing and pushing that thing around.
