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Re: hornwort's allelopathic behavior
peter wrote:
also, i don't know if you guys have heard about it before... but i heard
that
hornwort has a certain allelopathic behavior that is toxic to algae. is
that
true? if they have behaviors like that, wouldn't they be very effective on
controlling algae growth?
I am not sure I caught any/all of the discussion or responses on this but if
you mean (as I suspect you do) an allelopathic influence via a "baneful
influence" (the dictionary) in terms of secreting toxic substances, I have
not heard of this nor read it. What I suspect you may be hearing, based on
what I have read (for instance, in the "Aquarium Plants Manual" by Ines
Scheurman), is that while many plants prefer or utilize ammonium (sp?),
Hornwort, among some other plants, makes use of nitrates (so stated in the
above book) and by keeping the nitrates down you are inhibiting algae
growth.
I finally got my hands on some Hornwort because I wrestle with keeping my
nitrates down and thought it would thrive and ameliorate the nitrate
situation. Alas, the plant is very static and not thriving. My suspicion,
and others my counter or confirm this, is that Hornwort (though it may
tolerate a range of hardnesses) thrives in hard water, i.e., harder than my
very soft water. There was a post from a gentleman in England who said he
was pulling gobs of it out of his tanks and he had hard water as I recall.
Somewhere in one of my books I read about other aquatic plants that readily
make use of nitrates -- do people out there know which particular species
these are?
thx- drew