A Sceptic

[Charles]

I recently set up several tanks, getting my house back to order.

In four of them I used "Flourite" for substrate, about the same fish
load, similar plants, anubias, vallisnaria and a handfull of egeria in
each. similar lighting in all.

One tank has almost no algae, one has some brown stuff growing on the
glass, one has about what I'd expect of hair algae growing here and
there, one exploded, chocked the tank, so much that I've hit it with
double dose of algae killer. fish couldn't even swim in that one.

When I see that someone has made some change to their tank and
reported results, I think about mine.

the tank with the bad algae problem used to have almost none with
higher fish load, the anubis was taking over. Now same light, same
bad water, fewer fish and it's a mess.

[NetMax]

"Charles" > wrote in message
...
>I recently set up several tanks, getting my house back to order.
>
> In four of them I used "Flourite" for substrate, about the same fish
> load, similar plants, anubias, vallisnaria and a handfull of egeria in
> each. similar lighting in all.
>
> One tank has almost no algae, one has some brown stuff growing on the
> glass, one has about what I'd expect of hair algae growing here and
> there, one exploded, chocked the tank, so much that I've hit it with
> double dose of algae killer. fish couldn't even swim in that one.
>
> When I see that someone has made some change to their tank and
> reported results, I think about mine.
>
> the tank with the bad algae problem used to have almost none with
> higher fish load, the anubis was taking over. Now same light, same
> bad water, fewer fish and it's a mess.

lol *sorry Charles* I've seen the same thing. When looking after the
store tanks, I had many instances where 2 or more tanks were reset at the
same time, same gravel, lights etc, and one would develop a
characteristic which the other(s) would not (usually some strain of
algae). I think there is a combination of threshold triggers. When one
is passed, the change in the nutrient mix in the water causes another
threshold to be crossed and so on, and so on until the nutrient mix now
strongly favours one organism over another, contrasting what seems to be
an identical aquarium, inches away. This is what makes so much of the
advice we give somewhat futile, as the chain of events can have more
bearing than the limited water parameters which we can measure.

The most obvious example was demonstrated to me by one of my home tanks,
which developed an algae bloom (seriously bad, visibility in inches).
After trying a series of 'cures', I decided that I wasn't going to worry
about this more than the fish inside (who were prospering) and I decided
to let nature takes it's course. About 4 months after it went green, the
water went crystal clear in about 3 days (with no intervention). It
simply crossed a nutrient threshold, and the algae spore population
collapsed. Had I still been trying different techniques to clarify the
water, I would be swearing that the one I had been using when the water
cleared was the cure. Almost every piece of advice needs those 4 magic
letters: ymmv ;~).
--
www.NetMax.tk

[A Man]

I know what you mean. I'm guessing in the tank with algae, something died,
and that raised nitrates to a certain level, favoring the algae. I am in the
process of trying to grow algae to feed daphnia. I find that I have to get
the nitrates kind of high before it will "take over" on its own. It appears
nitrates have to be 40-50ppm before I'll get a good growth of algae.

I use land plant fertilizer to help grow the algae plus some aquatic plant
fertilizer, which contains iron. I don't know if algae needs iron like
aquatic plants do but I figure it couldn't hurt.

--
Sig: Say no to fixed width HTML tables. They look terrible in most browsers.

[Patricia A. Shaffer]

On Tue, 1 Nov 2005 09:40:23 -0500, A Man > wrote:

>I know what you mean. I'm guessing in the tank with algae, something died,
>and that raised nitrates to a certain level, favoring the algae. I am in the
>process of trying to grow algae to feed daphnia. I find that I have to get
>the nitrates kind of high before it will "take over" on its own. It appears
>nitrates have to be 40-50ppm before I'll get a good growth of algae.
>
>I use land plant fertilizer to help grow the algae plus some aquatic plant
>fertilizer, which contains iron. I don't know if algae needs iron like
>aquatic plants do but I figure it couldn't hurt.

All I do to grow algae is to put a container of tap water on a
windowsill and wait awhile ... I learned that trick from rooting
branches of pussywillow and forsythia for friends ... <g> I only add
plant food when the branches have sent out a good mass of roots.

I sometimes use some of the "green water" thus obtained to help
re-seed a freshly sterilized quarrantine tank, and I sometimes add a
little to well-established tanks where I keep algae-loving fish
(Mollies, Otocinclus, etc.) and snails.


--
Patricia
Proud Citizen of the Commonwealth of Virginia