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Riccia bad???



About 2 weeks ago an SAE jumped from my 50 gal tall and I grabbed it and 
put it back in.  Two days later another? SAE jumped and was not found so 
quickly and died on the carpet.   I wondered what had made them jump but 
just tightened up security.

Meanwhile I had begun to grow a fairly thick riccia carpet on the surface 
of the tank.

I left for a 8 day vacation and came back to find another SAE dead.  Diana 
told me the SAEs had been acting weird generally.   The dead one was nose 
down at the gravel.   Later that PM I saw another SAE nose down (but 
apparently alive and heathy).  Meanwhile I noticed the heavy luxuriant 
riccia growth had continued.

Today I saw two SAEs looking sickly, and the riccia was even more 
blanketing the surface.   Finally drawing the obvious conclusion, I removed 
8 oz of riccia from the surface, returning normal light to the plants.

It is a little too early to draw conclusions, but if the SAEs recover, I 
would guess that the riccia was trapping the incoming light and generating 
oxygen near the surface, rendering the lower layers relatively oxygen poor, 
which I would bet the SAEs would hate.

Anyone have any contributions to this evolving tale????





--
Dave Gomberg, San Francisco       gomberg at wcf dot com
http://www.wcf.com/co2iron for low cost CO2 systems that work!
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