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my tank gets some algae around the edges, and there are some little bits of left over food always around. i heard there are some fish that eats the left overs and the algae, and also the poop. what is the name of these fish? i am in new zealand and am unsure of which type of fishies we get over here.

You probably dont want to spend too much on fish as your turtles view everything in your tank as food. I keep some guppies in my tank along with some snails and they keep it pretty clean in my opinion. Right now, I have a 29 gallon, and I have 6 snails, and probably around 20-30 baby guppies and it takes a few weeks before it starts to show much dirt on the bottom.

Mike

Pleco is a great algae eating fish, but like it was posted earlier if it's much smaller than your turtles it could be lunch. I've had my pleco in the tank for a while and it's being left alone for now. But it's about the same size as the baby.

Just as another note, even if they leave something alone now, if you leave them alone for a day or two without any food cause you are out of town, everything becomes prey. I left mine alone for 3 days over the weekend while I was at home, and came back to my apartment to find many fewer guppies which they never ate, and all of my plants were eaten down to the roots.

A solution I am trying, and it has apparently been successful, has been the addition of a few pennies inserted into my filter. I got the idea somewhere, maybe this forum. Since doing this about 2 months ago, my algae growth has been reduced substantially...not eliminated, but reduced.

choice, i will go and get them some guppies and throw them in with the turtles. shall be fun to watch them try and catch them. im not sure if we have plecos here, but will see anyway.

You could also use aquatic frogs.

Chances are if you would put in frogs, the turtles might start liking french cuisine....

A large pleco and a few snails should do the trick-- I put pennies in my filter yesterday. thanks for the tip

My turt ignores the little guppie I put in there for it. I expected her to snatch it up right away because last time a bug landed in her tank she wasted no time gobbling it up. lol. But the guppie has been there for about a week now and it's still doing fine. I don't feed it in hopes it'll clean up the tank for me. If it can be food for my turt at least can be useful some way.

How big is it?

I found this article about how to treat fish diseases for those of you who also keep fish :
http://www.futurepets.com/trivia/aquariums-diseases.htm

I was looking for information about using copper in the turtle tank, I found that it is used for treatment of some diseases and parasites as well as algae control, but too much can kill your fish and might have some effect in turtles if it accumulates too much, I still have'nt found a credible source yet, but if I do I will post it.