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Lighting Update and "The Case of the Missing Platy"



From the responses I got from this list, particularly the article written
by George, I decided that lighting intensity is far more critical then
duration. More lights the better. As a result, I went and bought two more
single-fixture shop lights from Home Depot and added them to my 24" deep
90gal tank. I had to get two single-fixture units instead of one double
because the location of the hinged opening of the custom hood was in the
way. The tank now has 240w fluorescent: 2 Tritons, 2 Ultralume, and two
cool whites. I may experiment with a growlux type plant bulb instead of
the cool whites but those were all I had in the basement. I've also
reduced lights on duration to 10 hours from 13, with a one hour "dark" 
time in the afternoon. I hope this is going to help with the algae 
problem (getting worse - now I have a lot of "green dots" and "fur" on many 
of my plants and the glass). 

In case you've already read my post in rec.aquaria, I apologize. One of 
my platies used for cycling the tank disappeared without a trace. I 
looked for it everywhere. The tank is starting to be densely planted, and 
I thought it might be hiding. Came feeding time, and still no show. Now 
it's been more than 24 hours and it's still missing. The lift tubes of 
the UGF is currently unused and submerged. Could the little guy decide to 
go for an underground tour and got stuck somewhere? Has anyone else lost 
a fish or two without any explanation (I mean physically disappeared)?
I hope it's not rotting under the gravel and foul the water...

 John Y. Ching (jyching at watnow_uwaterloo.ca)    |
 Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence Lab	| 
 Department of Systems Design Engineering      	| 
 University of Waterloo, Canada            	|