How do I have a brightly-lit tank without algae?

On Thu, 5 May 2005 19:48:29 +0100, Alan Silver
wrote:


Baby bristlenoses? That sounds like fun!! Trouble is, I have no idea
whether mine is a boy or girl, and catching him wouldn't be easy. Still,
I might do some research and see if I can find out how to tell the
difference.

Mature males (4" +) have long bristles. Females just stubs.


BTW what sort of Malawi cichlids are they? Most of the common Mbuna
eat algae, especially if no easier food is supplied. If they have
other food they won't eat the algae - why scrape rocks when flakes are
around. Mbuna fed on algae turn on their best colours.

Mine do scrape at the algae a bit, but not a huge amount. Maybe if it
were longer they might, but as I said, it's very short.

It's the short algae they like. Leave them without food for a few days
and see what happens. 90% of Mbuna are algae eaters.


--
Steve Wolstenholme Neural Planner Software

EasyNN-plus. The easy way to build neural networks.
http://www.easynn.com

In article ,
says...

90% of Mbuna are algae eaters.

Actually the Mbunas are after the crustaceans in the algae, like shrimp
salad. So their diet consists of mainly algae. (so I've read)

I have a treo of Electric Yellow (Labidochromis caeruleus) in my 38 usg
tank that love the bush algae and chase away the Florida flag fish I
bought to take care of it.

--
Jim Anderson
( 8(|) To email me just pull my_finger

On Thu, 05 May 2005 23:41:59 GMT, Jim Anderson
wrote:

In article ,
says...

90% of Mbuna are algae eaters.

Actually the Mbunas are after the crustaceans in the algae, like shrimp
salad. So their diet consists of mainly algae. (so I've read)


They vary from those that just eat the algae to those that eat the
creatures in the algae and the algae itself. Then just a few Mbuna
don't eat algae at all.

I have a treo of Electric Yellow (Labidochromis caeruleus) in my 38 usg
tank that love the bush algae and chase away the Florida flag fish I
bought to take care of it.

That particular Labidochromis is a micropredator. They are searching
the algae for tasties!


--
Steve Wolstenholme Neural Planner Software

EasyNN-plus. The easy way to build neural networks.
http://www.easynn.com

Baby bristlenoses? That sounds like fun!! Trouble is, I have no idea
whether mine is a boy or girl, and catching him wouldn't be easy. Still,
I might do some research and see if I can find out how to tell the
difference.

Mature males (4" +) have long bristles. Females just stubs.

Thanks, I found this on a web page shortly after posting. Mine is a boy,
so I guess if I can buy a girl, I could have wedding bells!!

I'm not sure if mine is fully mature yet though as he's only about 3"
long. Still, a friend won't do any harm, even if they are too young to
get married yet ;-)

BTW what sort of Malawi cichlids are they? Most of the common Mbuna
eat algae, especially if no easier food is supplied. If they have
other food they won't eat the algae - why scrape rocks when flakes are
around. Mbuna fed on algae turn on their best colours.

Mine do scrape at the algae a bit, but not a huge amount. Maybe if it
were longer they might, but as I said, it's very short.

It's the short algae they like. Leave them without food for a few days
and see what happens. 90% of Mbuna are algae eaters.

Well, my local cichlid expert reckons that I wasn't feeding them enough,
so I just increased the amount of food!! I do see them having a go at
the algae, but I don't know how much difference they make to it.

Having said that, when we had our tropical tank, I once had a problem
where the filter on the cichlid tank failed. I dropped a Fluval 2 from
the tropical tank into the cichlid tank to keep it going until the
following day when I went out and bought a new filter. The tropical tank
had a real algae problem at that time (caused by a lack of attention
from me) and the Fluval had long (about 2"-3") hair algae on it. Within
an hour in the cichlid tank it looked like new!! So they do eat algae!!

Anyway, I took out the halogen lights yesterday and replaced them with
some energy saving bulbs (which are effectively small fluorescent tubes
curled up), so I will see how that affects matters. I intend on leaving
it a week and seeing what the glass looks like.

Thanks for the reply.

--
Alan Silver
(anything added below this line is nothing to do with me)