Thought help: Are there any small animals that eat algae? - Help.com

A paludarium is part land, part water. I plan to have Otos and Siamese Algae Eaters to take care of any algae in the water part, but I don’t think they will be able to eat the algae growing in the moist land parts above the water line.

I didn’t know that crayfish eat algae. The crayfish that I’ve heard of grow relatively large and have a reputation for eating small fish. The paludarium will be pretty small, so there will only be room for small creatures that stay small. Do you know of any crayfish that don’t grow much bigger than 2-3″ that would be able to take care of land algae?

I know of several snails that help with algae (Apple snails, Mystery snails, Ramshorns, Malaysian Trumpets, among others), but I was under the impression that they are fully aquatic. Are there any small, amphibious snails that I don’t have to worry about overpopulating my tank that eat algae?

I’m not worried about algae underwater, because I know what usually causes it and I can prevent it in advance. But since this is going to be my first paludarium, and there is little info on paludariums in general, I don’t know how much algae I’ll get on the areas just above the waterline where it will be moist enough for algae to grow, but dry enough that fully aquatic creatures won’t be able to get to it. I think with the shape of the land part and the small size of the tank it might be hard to remove by hand. The only option I can see at the moment is some kind of algae-eating amphibian.

Thanks for the link. I think that there might be some insects, arachnids, or shrimp that eat algae, but there’s a good chance that the other inhabitants might eat them.

I’m wondering if I might even have an algae problem that would require that kind of attention. I plan to have one or two stream/waterfalls, and if they get algae like the way power filters do, it would defiantly be a bother. Maybe I can make them deep enough to let the fish swim up and eat the algae. I guess I’ll have to send a few e-mails to some people who’ve had paludariums and ask if they had any major problems with algae. I’ll tell you guys what I find out.