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Aquarium Plant Handbook Review and No CO2 for algae control



Howdy everyone...

Just received my copy of Oriental Aquarium's  "The Aquarium Plant 
Handbook" that the AGA is now offering.  For those that didn't spring 
for this one, it's available from the AGA's bookstore and it a great 
compliment to Kasselman's text; it covers a lot of new unidentified 
species and since a lot of places get their stock from them, it's 
prolly a great guide to common/pseudo botanical names if you're trying 
to track something very unusual down on the import lists... Also, the 
culture section is very close to the "Barr" method; it recommends water 
column dosages of NO3/PO4/K+ and traces at about the levels this list 
commonly recommends.  This is very up-to-date stuff and differs from 
all the German texts which seem to keep recommending substrate only 
fertilization; it's just good to see another technique in print.  And 
at the price it's being offered I really do think it's money well 
spent... in fact, it's so up-to-date some species names are actually 
crossed-off and penned in by someone :)

Anyhow, the only real surprise was their recommendation for cases of 
severe algae infestation.  They recommend a 90% water change weekly 
while resetting nutrients levels to those near what Tom plugs _but_ 
they recommend only fertilizing once weekly and killing the CO2.  This 
is a rather unusual technique that seems to contradict conventional 
wisdom, wondering if anyone has any ideas why this may be effective.  
To add to the mass of anecdotal evidence surrounding algae 'care' I 
recently built a new reactor for my 29 gallon since I was having a few 
problems with the Eheim Ecco on it locking up from excess gas in the 
filter; thing was this reactor wasn't too effective... but the algae in 
the tank really melted away?? Anyone else find that lowering gas and 
CO2 levels did algae in?  Any ideas why other than at lower gas levels 
the nutrients will remain closer to ideal for a longer time period?

Cheers,
Jeff Ludwig