Gravel and Tankmates?

[cynthia]

I have been keeping Siamese Algae Eaters SAE for 6 years now. They were hard to find here, and are often confused with the flying fox (which is aggressive).

SAE do eat algae very well when they are young they even eat black algae, but I have found as they age they prefer fish food to algae and do not do near as good of job of removing algae as adults.

They do get fairly large and are quick to dart around the tank like red tailed sharks. They do strike each other and chase. Sometimes it appears for fun sometimes as a disagreement. Because of their quick movement I would not keep them with axolotls. And I'm not sure I would completely trust them not to pester axolotls for fun.

I highly recommend SAE for tropical community tanks though. They are characters and like to all try and sit on the same leaf of a plant together.
They don't like to be alone, I recommend keeping at least 3 together.

 

[brian]

I'd never dealt with larger ones, I usually swapped them for smaller ones as they grew (except for the ones in with my Exedons). I usually prefer to have several smaller algae eaters rather than one large one, I find it works better.