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Actually, it appears someone tricked you into buying a bunch of Chinese Algae Eaters.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

cctuallu i am pretty sure they are not CAE...They hade CAE's inder the right name in anothr tank....

10gallon: 8neons 5gallon: 1betta
1oto
2platys

Unless I'm looking at the wrong pictures, those are definitely Gyrinocheilos aymonieri. The species exhibits a large degree of variance between individuals, but the Chinese Algae Eater is the only commonly available Cypriniform "algae eater" with those distinct spots on the side (even if they are connected, as in your fish).

Siamese Algae Eaters, False Siamese Algae Eaters, and Flying Foxes all have distinct, smooth stripes down their sides. This page is probably one of the most useful when it comes to identifying SAEs and their look-alikes.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

Natalie is right, I have SAE 's all over the place, and this aint them. Welcome to excellent algae eating bad tempered fish.lol.

Thats a misidentification and thusly not the fish you paid good money for, therefore you should be completely entitled to get your money back if you want it.


Ok here is some id shots of the fish youre after (Epalzeorhynchus siamensis) . Mine are adults and so that really takes using stripes to identify them out of the equation, besides the bit you really should be looking at is the mouth.

Its a normal mouth not the usual sucker cup you'd expect from the usual algae eating types. This mouth enables them to nibble rather than scrape and is the reason they are omnivores in the true sense of the word, able to eat anything, from mollusc meat to even hair algae, since their mouth gives them the ability to take it on structurally.

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a245/longhairedgit/IMG_3696.jpg

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a245/longhairedgit/IMG_3701.jpg


http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a245/longhairedgit/IMG_3708.jpg

Note the cutting blade in the upper lip, and if you wondered how they skim algae, they do so by having a bit of a flip top lower jaw. They open the jaw right back and let the upper cutting blade scrape down , as well as being able to eat like a normal fish. I have to say this does make them quite amusing to watch while eating, especially since they seem to chew after scraping or nipping at about a thousand miles an hour, giving them a twitchy nosed look!

Other info you might want to know is this , despite comments to the contrary they finish out at near on 7 inches. My 12 SAE 's are all that size!

They can and do like company, they dont beat each other up incessantly, although they are a bit e to panic. Im one of the few here who has kept 12 adults all in the same aquarium and they shoal both defensively and form rows on the floor looking rather like they are waiting for a bus, and sometimes they form rows with alternate fish inserted head first in opposire directions.They watch each others backs!

Last but not least if you want them to eat algae as adults beyond the odd mouthful you have to starve them out a bit. Mine eat the tetra prima first and algae after every time if they can. Dont feed your fish for a day or two, and they give the aquarium a skim after that. If controlled for diet they make one of the very best aglae eaters, eating stuff others wont touch, failing that control they still make a very effective scavenger. For this reason dont keep them with smaller scavengers like cories,the cories will be outcompeted easily. Nice thing is that they have to be the easiest fish to feed period. They do well on almost any food source, and they can usually find edible algae in any tank. They are not aggressive to other fish, and they wont even eat tiny fish, but they will panic and that could mean some severely battered neon tetras.

On breeding though, you might as well forget it. They need a lot of room for that (ie a lake or river), and if you can sex them youre a better man than I am. Ive had pregnant females, but they wont lay, they just reabsorb the eggs. If they do lay, they eat the eggs so fast Ive never even seen them.

Last shout though, is that they need a large aquarium, 30 gallon minimum for normal growth, and preferably a 55 plus. They do suffer from dwarfing, and most peoples ive seen are very small, slow growing and unhealthy fish next to mine.They are a big,fast, vigourous fish with a fast metabolism. They need room to move.Adult size can be reached in 8 months. Other peoples flaky growth stats are down to lack of space and food variety. Trust me, kept properly they grow really fast.

If you do get some, dont be surprised about how weird they are when they sleep. They sleep upside down, in water flow, jammed in things , and they try to sleep on plants that cant suppport their weight, or leaning on things in some truly weird ways. I have one that sleeps every night with his head on the led light part of a hydor ario with his body vertical held up by the bubble flow.

Clever , yet very strange fish, and one of the few that still makes me giggle and illicits the odd comment from visitors to my house along the lines of "what the hell is that nutso fish doing?".

Why not try the flag fish, doesn't grow to big 2" to 2.5" is the biggest I've seen captive or wild and the eat everything, except for hard green algea on the tank glass. But I have found that a maga wipe after I'm done watching they fish takescae of that

Djrichie
"So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish" Douglas Adams

Those fish in the picture are definitely CAE. I bought one 6 months ago with differnet color. The LFS labelled it as Marbel Algae Eater. Whatever the color is, they are the same CAE..

They are very effective algae eater when they're young. But once reaching the size of 4 - 5 inches, they'll stop eating alage, and becoming aggressive. The worse thing is.. they seem to like sucking the body slime out of your bigger fish..

.......:` This sucks, I completly forgot SAE's dont have sucker mouths...Now I have to bring them back, I hope they take them...and give me my money...Ok so I went to 10 diffrent LFS and didt find one SAE time to get a flag fish...thanks guys.

Oh i still want you to see a pic fo the third one but I cant find him he has one solid black stripe....
There ya go:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y179/Xlinkinparkx/IMGP3703.jpg

Hope its a good enough pic, oh man now I have to catch these fast buggers...

10gallon: 8neons 5gallon: 1betta
1oto
2platys

I wouldnt mix flag fish in with your fish.
They can be super nippy of fish with long flowing fins.


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