# what is the best BBA eater?



## bratyboy2 (Feb 5, 2008)

subject says enough tell me your opinions and why?


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## Tex Gal (Nov 1, 2007)

Flourish Excel.[smilie=u:

Actually rosy barbs and black mollies love the stuff.


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## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

Styphodon ornatus.

--Nikolay


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## ddavila06 (Jan 31, 2009)

niko said:


> Styphodon ornatus.
> 
> --Nikolay


you are missing the "why". do you have a common name to the species? i have a 75 to deal with and looking at the options


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## Wire Fox Terror (Apr 7, 2006)

There are several threads on TPT about the success people are having with those gobies and BBA. I'm about to try one myself because of all the rave reviews.


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## armedbiggiet (May 6, 2006)

Farlowella. They don't even eat the fish food while I was feeding others.


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## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

ddavila06 said:


> you are missing the "why". do you have a common name to the species? i have a 75 to deal with and looking at the options


Ddavila,

My own experience with one of the Styphodon ornatus in a 180 gal tank:

The entire tank is covered in BBA. I estimate I'll have about 5 gallons of dry BBA if I decide to remove it.

I put the goby in it just to see if something willl change. It did.

The goby claimed a bush of moss that had both BBA and Cladophora. It lived on, under, and around the bush. The moss was the size of half a football. The goby cleaned it completely in about 4-5 days. Never damaged the leaves. The moss was the only green thing in the tank when the goby took care of it. Pristinely clean moss.

Some of the other fish in the tank developed a disease and it killed the goby too. It took 2-3 days for the moss to get covered in BBA and Cladophora again. So the goby really cleaned 24/7, constantly eating whatever managed to grow, before it became visible.

Also, every so often the goby would go on trips away from its favorite moss bush. It liked to visit 2 areas very often. These areas had noticeably shorter BBA and almost no Cladophora.

--Nikolay


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## bratyboy2 (Feb 5, 2008)

where can you get one of these? and how much we talking?


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## Tex Gal (Nov 1, 2007)

Niko -The gobies that I got from you are amazing. They have been working on my rocks non- stop. It's my rocks that are prone to BBA. They are so cute. I love them. They are hands down better than any SAE out there. I don't know about caldo but I love these guys.

FYI - they are jumpers. I put two in Tex Guy's tank and found one on the floor. Luckily he was still moving around - covered in cat fur! I stuck him back in and he swam off - out of the fur. I saw him today and he does have a little tummy scratch in red. Hope he heals well. Poor little guy!


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## The old man (Apr 12, 2008)

I just received 10 black line sand gobies from Invertz on a group order. Put them in three tanks on friday and today is the first day I've been able to see them eat anything and it was BBA on a Anubia leaf. Normally I feed these three tanks with a mixture of Spirella shrimp, daphia and bood worms along with flake foods. The gobies find themselves a place in the tank and sometimes they are very hard to find as there is a lot of plants, driftwood, etc. for them to find hiding places. Now that they are getting aclimated to their new surroundings I'm hoping to see them out eating more often. None seem to have jumped out yet and one of them is in a rimless pico tank.


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## Qwertus (Oct 14, 2008)

Where did you buy those gobies?


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## The old man (Apr 12, 2008)

I got mine from Invertz factory,
invertzfactory.com

The red neon gobies are also supposed to be good algae eaters.


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## oakleyhoma (Nov 11, 2008)

I wonder about swordtails, do they eat BBA?


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## SemperFish (Oct 24, 2009)

I have a problem with BBA also. I've been dosing with excel and noticed that it help some. I would like to have a SAE however none of my LFS have them in stock and I don't want to spend the money to have one shipped from an online store.


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