Thinking of starting an aquarium. Have a 10 gallon tank. Want a fish to help clean the tank. What's the difference between a Pleco vs. an Algae Eater? Thanks!
Answers:
It depends on who is saying it. Some people lump them together and call them algae eaters, or sucker fish. Generally in the trade algae eater refers to Gyrinocheilos aymorieri, or the chinese algae eater. Of course the name is also used for the siamese algae eater, false siamese algae eater, flying fox, and otto. While Pleco often refers to Hypostomus plecostomus, or the common pleco. To make matter worse there are about 10 or so pleco species that are mistaken for Hypostomus plecostomus. (Honestly I can't tell them apart.) Not to mention another 10 plecos like the zebra, brislenosed, bullnosed pleco. .. (Which I generally can tell apart.) This leads some people to refer to them as L(some number).
This confusion causes a lot of trouble as the chinese algae eater, and common pleco will grow to a foot. (As either fish will readily eat anything that fits in their mouths. This can be an issue.) Other breeds like the rubberlipped/bullnosed, and bushynose pleco grow to 4 inches. Or the otto thats grows to 2 inches.
there is no difference, pleco is short for plecostomus, and people have just simplified there name to algea eaters, I guess b/c that is what they do
Plecos are one kind of algae eaters but there are more
People call plecos algae eaters but they are different. If you want to clean the green stuff that grows on the glass and tank go with the pleco, algae eaters mostly just eat the left over food.
yeah i think pleco is the latin term?
10 gallon tank is really too small for a pleco-the common ones get too big, and the smaller ones are about 4-6 inches. So, you won't be able to add many more fish. I'd go with some snails and ghost shrimp for cleaners.
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