House Keeping Fish

If your tank is placed in a bright location, or if you are using bright lights, you will surely experience algae issues every now and then. This leads to a tank that's filled with algae, which prevent you from seeing your fish. For this I would recommend a sucker. I have personally tried snails and Kissing Gouramis, but the sucker fish out beats them both single handedly. I've got one and I shuffle him between my tanks every now and then. He is a hog and it takes him
approximately 2-3 days to clear up everything in my tank.

The Sucker aka Pleco has a hard and tough back that protects it from most fish. This fish can do just fine with most big sized aggressive fish. It’s a very efficient cleaner for your tank. The sucker’s mouth is specially designed to rasp up algae attached to the tank, and in fact it does the job of a scrubber.

When keeping a sucker, avoid keeping too many as they grow large and their dietary requirements increase considerably. However, you get many varieties and some are small in size. I just have one Goliath which I keep shuffling between my tanks to do the scrubbing job, and when I say “job”, it’s not really a job for him, in fact it’s a welcome treat. He does just fine with my Convict Cichlids. Upon placing him in a tank that’s covered with algae, it doesn't even take him a minute to realize and get down to his scrubbing job..

If you do not have much algae growing quickly, you might want to supplement his diet with some lettuce leaves every now and then. Mine has adapted himself to eat even dry pellets that float at the top. He turns himself upside down and sucks the water surface and sucks in the pellets.

Apart from algae, a sucker will also consume dead fish or any organic matter.

The Convict Cichlid (Kindle Edition Ebook)