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Me and all

Hello everyone!

I've been here for a while, answering some questions
concerning snails, plecos, etc since this is what I know
best. However, I've never been much of a plant keeper, and
recently I discovered that I am finally succesful with
keeping some plants in two tanks and started getting
interested in it now. I am mostly succesful with a very easy
plant: Hygrophila glabra, which is almost a plague in my
goldfish tank, as it constantly keeps growing out of water,
I trim it, stick the tip in the ground and get a new
full-size plant within a month or so :).

Most of my plants are in my 50-liter Goldfish tank, where I
keep a couple of species of Hygrophila, Synnema and perhaps
Nomaphila (I wish I had clear directions as to HOW to figue
out which species I actually have :( ). Later I introduced
Vallisneria americana, Aponogeton crispus (one of each) and
today some Vallisneria spiralis and Marsilae sp. (how to
find out which species I have?!).

In my Corydoras/small loricariidae tank (where the plants
can survive, since NONE are able to survive my Panaqua's
apetite, not even Aglaonema simplex which I have in the tank
since two days but I'm removeing it today to the smaller
catfish tank...) I had the Aglaonema, Echinodorus
amazonicus, Echinodorus sp. (can someone help me out here?
It has one characteristic feature - when young its leaves
are light green with darker spots in some places, which
disappears with age, adult leaves are large, up to about 40
cm in length and 10 in width), and another Echinodorus sp.
(out of the colour of the leaves I think it may be E.
osiris). I had temporary problems with all Echinodorus,
which I credited to some kind of a disease, but it's now OK
(I haven't done anything special, perhaps it was the problem
of the fact that they were all freshly moved to that tank
from the shop and they might not have liked the substrate so
much at the beginning...). I also recently added some
Cabomba caroliniana and it's growing FAAST!

Today I bought new plants for that SA tank: Sagittaria
eatonii (I think, although someonle told me it actually may
be Echinodorus tenellus, how to tell the difference?!) and
Ludwigia sp. (don't have the right books to identify it :(
).

However, in both tanks I am fighting what is becoming more
of a problem now that my plants are doing well. It's, of
course, algae... I have those darn hair algae (short, about
1 cm in length, dark green/brown - sorry, I'm partly
colourblind - grows in tight groups over the surface of the
stones or at the edge of a leaf, in smaller numbers present
also on the leaf itself, attacks only older leaves and kills
them :( ) and i cannot find a way to get rid of it
(especially in the goldfish tank). I have even recently
bought special tablets to fight algae, but they supposively
work for a long time (meaning they may get rid of it in 2
months or so...).

This is probably a question which is asked here often, but
please forgive me, I haven't really followed the older
discussions, how to get rid of it. I realize there must be
something that is encouraging it to grow - is it large
number of fish in a tank? Is it the lighting (for example
18W Osram Daylight fluorescent light, about 2 cm away from
the water surface, no gap, in the goldfish tank). is there
any way to at least support this chemical in fighting the
algae?

Oh, and last question. A couple of days ago I got a new
Hygrophila, which is very interesting in the fact that
supposively its underwater leaves (I have the paludarium
"version" and waiting for it to grow underwater leaves) are
citron yellow. Its leaves are BIG (about twice as big as H.
glabra) and thick, can someone help me identify it?

           /
          ||/   -=< TONID >=-
     | /| |/   Tomasz Nidecki
     || |//    tonid at falcon_mimuw.edu.pl (FWD to FIDO)
     ||////    Tomasz.Nidecki at f78_n480.z2.fidonet.org
     /  /_
    |', ___
    |  /
     --

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Message originated at Tonid's Endemic Zone FIDO-Gate
From: Tomasz Nidecki <Tomasz.Nidecki at f78_n480.z2.fidonet.org>
To:   All
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