On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 18:09:42 -0400, Mood wrote:

I have kept two discus and some other small fish (Cory, 2 brislenose plecos,
12 cardinals, 5 otos) in a 55 gallon for over 2 years now. Over the years,
I made some half-hearted attempts at keeping live plants, mostly Amazon
Swords, but never had spectacular results.

the plants were slowly growing, but the algae was growing much faster.

I am using Seachem Neutral Buffer and Discus Buffer to treat/buffer my tap

My matenence includes daily 10% water changes, adding the Seachem buffers,
Tetra FloraPride, and a tablespoon of seasalt to the change water. I
perform a bi-weekly cleaning of my Fluval 304. The lighting is on for 12hrs
a day (down from 15.)

Personally, I don't like buffers. I also don't like doing water
changes, and in my big planted tank (700 litre, about 180 USgal) did
10% about once every two or three (or six, sometimes) weeks. On the
small (35 USgal) I did them once a week. (Past tense because one is
now not densely planted, and the other is low-light low-maintenance
plants).

I'd drop the buffers, cut down on the fertiliser and skip the salt,
then see what happens. Presumably that will make teh water harder,
but how much? If it's only a little the fish probably won't mind, and
it reduces your workload.

Reduce teh fertiliser because fertiliser in teh water column can
disproportionately favour algae. Fertiliser in teh substrate will
disproportionately favour rooted plants, so try and introduce some
laterite to the substrate, or a proprietary fertiliser tablets or
tea-bags or granules - one of teh systems that's inserted near the
roots.

Maybe cut down on feeding - overfeeding encourages algae (but I don't
know if you are overfeeding). Underfeeding also encourages all fish
(not just teh 'algae eaters') to worry at algae, which might help a
bit.

Vigorous floating plants will compete directly with algae for
nutrients in teh water. I had some giant duckweed once that used to
grow at an incredible rate - I'd take out all but a couple of patches,
and a week later it could be covering the surface. This is easy to
harvest (I used a plastic collander and just scooped out a load every
week). Don't let it escape into a natural watercourse - it's very
invasive.

Is there a good chance that using RO inplace of my tap water would
resolve my algae problem?

Yes, if it's due to nutrients in teh water, but you can reduce them in
teh ways set out above and not buy water.

Can reducing the light duration more help?

Doing things to teh lights can help. This is a bit mystic, but try
making changes and see if tehy seem to help. I felt 6hrs on - 1.5hrs
off - 6hrs on didn't upset the plants, but seemed to encourage less
algae.

The other thing you don't mention is algae-eating beasties. You've
got plecs, but I have found that different varieties of things can
help - I got best algae control when I had a small plec, a few siamese
foxes and some algae-eating shrimps. If I had to choose just one of
them, I'd go for the shrimps - they are constantly working, and they
turn over the top layer of substrate, getting bits of food that the
fish miss as well bits of algae. I'm not sure, but large discuss
might eat small shrimps, though, so that might rule them out.

I also don't mind snails, and they eat algae. I introduced some small
red ones that compete with the ugly brown ones, and occasionally pull
out ugly brown ones to give nice red ones an advantage. Also, teh
malaysian conical burrowing ones are good for the substrate and most
of them stay hidden during daylight, so you can have lots of hungry
snails but they aren't all over everything when you look in teh tank.
If you don't feed too much, you won't get over-run. Certainly, I
have never used any chemical control.

Algae-eating fish are good, if your stock levels can tolerate it (and
I've always gone for lightly-stocked in dense planted tanks). I think
several small ones are better than one large.

I'vbe never found anything that really enjoys teh blank fibrous algae
though. If I see that get hold remove whatever it's growing on, and
if it's expensive or difficult to replace I scrape, boil, bake and
generally sterilise as vigorously as I can before it goes back in teh
tank. If it's cheap and easy, I just chuck it. Black hairy algae is
a real pig to get rid of once it takes hold.


In summary then, this is what I'd do (in teh order I'd do it)

1: ditch all teh buffers
2: less fertiliser ('till teh plants are really dense)
3: feed very lightly
4: fiddle with teh lights, but don't go below 12hrs total per day
5: learn to like your snails

all of that costs nothing, or even saves you money and effort

6: get some algae eating shrimps
7: get some floating plant
8: consider some other algae-eating fish
9: consider substrate-type fertiliser

none of that is very expensive, or no more expensive than what you're
already doing.

If your water is really really hard (liquid rock) I'd maybe go to mix
some softened or RO water in - but then I'd not add minerals to teh
RO, since the whole point is to reduce teh minerals. However, I'm not
experienced at that - I'm fortunate to have only moderately hard
water.

The very last thing, once I'd done all that, would be to stick a CO2
system in place. However, teh grow-your-own ones are more mess and
work, and teh pressurised cylinder ones are expensive to set up.
Personally, I think the things above are all steps you do first, and
once you've got a tank that's fairly plant friendly, CO2 gives the
plants the boost to go from pretty good to really vigorous.

regards, Ian SMith
--
|\ /| no .sig
|o o|
|/ \|