Cleaner Fish?

Sekutur

This has been bothering me for a while I've heard people talk about cleaner fish but the idea to me seems a bit bizzare obviously these fish will produce waste. this has bee brought to a head with my dad deciding he needs a cleaner fish for his current tank.
Does anybody have any examples of cleaner fish I can research?

k19smith

I'm not sure of cleaner fish but I can think of a few dirty fish goldfish and pleco's are dirty. IMO

KendraMc

by "cleaner", do you mean ones that are less dirty or ones the clean your tank? i can see that term being used either way.

Sekutur

Ah yeah Im guessing he means to clean the tank.

KendraMc

then i'd say look at the catfish types. a lot of them will eat algae, though you do need to be careful, as they can't all survive on just algae and a lot of them get pretty big.

k19smith

Sorry I read that completely wrong at the beginning. What size tank does he have? and what kinds of fish does he currently have?

Sekutur

30g currently with a handfull of tetra and some guppies at the moement.
Im just wonderig do cleaner fish really work out?

k19smith

IMO no not really if he wants to add a fish because he likes it then I say go for it, but the new addition is also gonna produce waste. I like to try to keep a balance because I like to watch my different fish. I would say maybe a pleco but not a common one as it will be way to big for his tank, bristle nose maybe. Your cory catfish need to be in schools of at least 6 then he's gonna have way more waste than he has now. He could get shrimp or snails also.

Sekutur

Thanks guys Ill pass on the information :D

BarbH

Some fish will help in maintaining the cleaning of some aspects of a tank, but there is no fish that is going to really "clean" the tank. Bottom feeders like corys will eat fish food that makes it to the bottom of the tank that the other fish do not eat, but you can not expect them to live on scavenging alone. The still need to be fed their own source of food. Other types of fish like otos and different plecos will eat some types of algaes, such as brown diatoms, common algae, some of the plecos also require driftwood in their diet. For something that will help in the cleaning of a tank there are snails, which will eat differrent types of algae, left over food and detritus. Also depending on the type of substrate that you have, if sand than malaysian trumpet snails are good for keeping the sand from compacting and having anaerobic areas from developing. Overall the thing to remember is nothing compares from weekly water changes and cleaning the substrate, and we can not expect for one fish or invertebrates to take the place of that.