i looked around the website and found out that some algae eaters or plecos are compatible with goldfishes. what can happen if they are compatible? the reason im asking is because about a year ago i had some koi's for some time, but when i bought an algea eater they started dying one by one, but the algea eater survived. i now bought some new goldfishes and i wonder if the algea eater is somewhat harmful to them?
thanks

The most common threat an "algae eater" is to a goldfish is the habit of some breeds to latching onto other large fish while they're sleeping and sucking their slime coating off. This slime important to fish because it helps protect them, much like our skin protects us, from bad things in the environment.

Hello i have 2 SAE with a goldfish and happily live with each other, but i agree with the last post that algae eaters can kill your goldy i guess i just got 2 nice SAE's. the SAE are between 8-12cm and the goldfish is around 18cm the last time i checked it

I have a chinese algae eater that I rescued from our school tank, he's living with a bunch of super shy tetras. He can be pretty agressive, when they were in the tiny 5 gallon hex at school they didnt really have any space, so when I got to take them home, one algae eater was missing, the only thing we could come up with was that he was eaten by the bigger guy, thats the one I have now, I would never put him wiht my goldfish! He's about 4 inches now, thats bigger than most of my goldies!

It souunds like your algae eater could be the culprit. I had one for years and every now and then he'd attack a fish over night. At first I didn't know it was him but after joining this site I soon figured it out! My guy would even eat the eyes out of my poor goldies

Chrissy

Thank you for your valuable information, i recently took out the algae eater and the goldfishes seem much happier. i never saw the algae eater bother the goldishes while the lights was on, but i guess once i turned the lights off and the goldfishes went to sleep, the algae eater would come out and bother them. once again, thank you for your info i feel better knowing that it wasnt my fault for my fish dying, for a long time i thought it was my fault, even though i changed the water every week.

As u can see at the top of the forum to not to place a common pleco with the goldfish ... i had that experience before...and i learned it the hard way before i saw this forum...but there was once that i had a 6" common pleco which was living fine with the goldies .. and no problem their.. after trading in for a smaller one cuz my tank isn't big enough the pleco was fine at first until it got about 4" then the problem started they sucked on my goldfish .. and made bacterial infections to one of them and then later kind of spread... so then i took it out and researched on another alge eater... i had many choices here http://www.kokosgoldfish.com/comfish.html i didn't like the look of the bristle nose .. so i picked the rubbernose/rubberlip pleco which is aka: bulldog pleco... he is really shy.. which is good so non of them disturbed my goldies .. and they r living happily .. and one more thing they do a really good job on the alges .... even though not as good as the commons but they still do really good ... i would go for this one ...