[APD] RE: bad hair day

["Thomas Barr" <tcbiii at earthlink_net>]

>Replanted, filter cleaning and good dose of ferts and the impact 
> was awesome. Algae is still there in those hard to reach corners and on
the 
> driftwood so I'm not running a sterile environment from the chlorine 
> treatment  (even had a little hair algae come back on my java fern after
4 
> days), but it doesn't spread and the hair on my java just vanished one 
> night.  I've done the whole plant treatment thing before without the
gravel 
> vacuum and the algae has always come back, but with the vacuum the plants 
> are clear.  It's in my books as an every 6 month treatment I'm going to
be 
> doing from now on.
>
> BTW it also shows that you don't need lots of ferts in your gravel.. mine 
> was gravel only after the cleaning and plants were fine, better to have
the 
> plants take the nutrients out of there water column where the algae gets 
> it's food from than the roots and leave more ferts in the column for the 
> algae.
>
> Luck
> Pete. 

Too much mulm can be bad as well, this cleaning and restoring the gravel in
some sections with high flish loads helps.
If you have a good case of algae and have neglected the tank for
awhile.............this is a good idea.

I forgo any bleach treatments these days but it's okay for some folks and
plants.
I just trim and leave some algae on some plants and slowly remove it if the
main issue is addressed.
If the infestation is serious and many plants, then I might do the bleach
dip.

I do like the dip using bleach better than H2O2.
H2O2 you can use in the tank so it has a few more situations where it's
more appropriate vs bleach.  

I'll do a good rework and uprooting of each section once every month or two.
There is no real set and forget substrate over the longer term, I think
most CO2 enriched tank will benefits from a peroidic gravel vacuuming
perhaps yearly in 1/3-1/4 sections over the course of 3-4 weeks
before/during the water change.

Substrate can be a lot like sewers, no one thinks too mucgh about till
something goes wrong:-)

The excess organic carbon that you remove, can cause things to go too
anaerobic and reductive, also, all that mulm/organic waste takes bacteria
to break it down, that bacteria removes the O2, that's what is causing the
more intense reduction and drains the O2 from the water column.

A little is okay, a lot is bad.

This also makes it harder on roots, they need O2 as well. 

If you remove all the organic mulm/carbon waste, then that can dramatically
improve the O2, the bioload, improve reduction to where it should be, and
beat up the surfaces where algae like to attach.
Algae like mulm in high amounts IME/IMO.
But adding mulm to a new tank is great to start things, after a year or so,
you might consider a good uprrooting of a section and see how it helps.

This methiod of vacuuming and stirring up the gravel to remove and reduce
this mulm works with some substrates, others with lots of peat, layered,
soils, jobes etc all added, these are not good for this.

The nice thing about a gravel rework is that you a chance to re slope the
gravel. 
That improves the look and maintains the set up nicely, something folks
that aquascape a lot might want to add to their mainteance routines:-)

Regards, 
Tom Barr



 

 


_______________________________________________
Aquatic-Plants mailing list
Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
http://www.actwin.com/mailman/listinfo/aquatic-plants