When he was in the 10 gallon, there came a period of time where this fish would just... disappear. Like, he wouldn't be there. There wasn't that much in the tank at the time, and he wasn't under the pile of rocks that I originally put in there for him. I moved everything. Could not find him. He was the biggest fish in the tank at the time. WHERE COULD HE GO.
Hakuryu would disappear and reappear many times for weeks until one day while I was watching the tank I figured out his secret. Apparently the filter had a compartment that he was somehow swimming up into. At least the mystery was solved.
Unfortunately a few months later the filter crapped out and I had to replace it, (getting the fish OUT of it was annoying as hell.) The new filter had no compartment... so I got Hakuryu the tree stump that Gat would eventually hijack.
When it came time to transfer my fish to the 75 gallon, Hakuryu was one of the last that made the trip... First off because he's a scaleless fish (at least he's considered to be along with the Cory catfish) and... he's just a pain to move. He pretty much decided he was going to start jumping. But I finally got him into the tank.
All the fish moved, I watched to make sure they weren't freaking out more than would be expected, and once they found their hiding spots and the Corys started burrowing into the sand for food, I figured all was well.
Hakuryu decided he didn't like my tank set up...
In fact. he would NOT be happy until he made it the way HE envisioned it. He had to survey the entire domain, and prepare to redesign it.
I was in my room, reading a book and I look up to see an ominous cloud of silt, slowly rising and overtaking the entire tank... What... The heck. so I get up to go check it out...
MOUNDS of sand had been moved, a hole had been dug under Gat's tree stump, one plant was unrooted (I'd put the plants in a courser substrate to prevent too much burrowing but Hakuryu was determined on that one). The stump was in it's own hole, Hazel's (my rubber mouth pleco) lantern had sunk as well, and Hazel peeked out of his now half buried home in confusion.
Hakuryu was in the stump, tail FLYING, pushing more and more sand out of the stump and into a rising pile...
I stared... he stopped... stared at me... then swam into the hole he'd made under the log and just... watched me from it. Like trying to see what my reaction was... Didn't I just LOVE how he redecorated....
..... siiiiiiigh....
I replanted the plant. evened out the sand, unburied Hazel's home and put a bit of sand back under Gat's (not much cuz I knew Hakuryu would just dig it back out) and left it at that.
He hasn't made any big changes since, a few dug holes here or there, which are to be expected... I EXPECTED some burrowing. Just not like THAT.
Anyway, some facts about golden algae eaters.
Golden Algae eaters are just a color variation of the Chinese algae eater which are usually a silver color with a black stripe going through their bodies.
When small they're pretty docile and will eat algae as is their name, but when they grow larger, they'll move on to eat other things (mine likes algae wafers, the occasional pea, and sometimes shrimp pellets). They also will become more aggressive as they get larger and territorial.
As far as breeding goes, they're apparently very difficult to breed in captivity, and males tend to have larger "horns" at the tip of it's nose (those little nubs) and the females have a rounder body.
They can jump, so watch open aquariums.
I love how your fish have attitude. Just saying.
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