On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 22:58:26 GMT, Altum
wrote:

Feral Boy wrote:
I'm not sure why, but I have never been able to completely solve the algae
problem in my aquarium. I think its due to the 2.5ppm phosphate levels in my
tap water.

That's gotta suck. I had 2 ppm phosphate in my pond for a while but
didn't get algae. I think it was from the lily fertilizer tablets.
There was hardly any nitrate from the water hyacinth, though. I also go
light on iron ferts in outdoor setups. Have you read Tom Barr's
estimative index dosing? It's at http://www.barrreport.com. He says
you can control algae by limiting trace ammonia and iron rather than
phosphate. You limit trace ammonia with really good biofiltration.

Boiling water is what I use to clean driftwood and anything else I can
remove from my tank for cleaning. I haven't risked using bleach or peroxide
on my plants, and have instead changed them to fast growing stemmed, and a
few fast growing leaf type plants, which outgrow the thin layer of algae
that starts to cover slower growing plants.

I've never bleached plants either, although I've read that it can be
done. I have bleached and scrubbed heaters, filter intakes, airline
tubing, plastic plants, ceramic decorations, and rocks to get brush
algae off. Once I took a sharp knife to my driftwood and whittled the
darned stuff off. In another tank, it only grew on the driftwood so I
left it alone. It actually looked kinda cool.

Thank heavens for Excel and SAEs. Now I hardly have any. All I have is
a couple of tiny specs of it on the leaves of a few plants. (Touch wood)

I did get the phosphate level down to 1ppm when I was cleaning the gravel
once a week , so if that, or excess nitrate is what is causing the problem
cleaning could help.

Seems like cleaning helps everything in fish tanks. :-)

When I noticed a new message in Agent, (this one), I was in the middle
of reading the Krib's plant fertilizer FAQs, specifically the
Sears-Conlin paper, http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/Fertilizer/
trying to get a handle on Tom Barr's stuff and the poor man's dosing
thing. The above mentioned paper is pretty interesting, and when I
read slowly and move my lips, I am able to understand and retain some
of the information. I've been studying product labels, like Flourish
and Leaf Zone - (Flourish gives you a higher percentage of the good
stuff than Leaf Zone) - and I've been fumbling through my gardening
stuff, checking contents of things like liquid Kelp. Looking for a
commonly available product that contains potassium and nitrogen and no
phosphates . . . I know greensand is very high in potassium, but
haven't looked to see what else is in it. Some brand of stump remover
is pure potassium nitrate . . . interesting reading . . . . I've been
using Excel for a couple of weeks, and Flourish, just the straight
stuff - the beard algae has not returned after most of my plants got
heavily pruned and crew cutted and I've kept the window shade down at
all times . . . and all of my plants are producing new leaves, the
swords, vals, crypts, even the stem plants are producing new leaves
right at gravel level, where they usually stay bare for a few inches
and have to be pruned and tops replanted every now and then. I've
stepped up the (general) flourish dosing to daily, rather than the
prescribed once or twice a week, and am dosing the Excel daily as
well. I'm clumsily attempting Barr's concept of intentionally
overdosing and clearing out the excess with weekly water changes. I
don't have a lot of local resources for stuff like hydroponics - here
in Maine we grow our pot the old fashioned way, in well tended fields
and gardens, so not much call for hydroponics stuff.

-- Mister Gardener