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various things
>> Subject: Brown algae
>another plant&aquarium bulb. So my current set up is: a 29 gallon (long)
>tank end to end with a 20 gallon (high) tank (together they are 54" long,
>perfect for 4' lights), both are open topped (ie: no covers), with 2 4' 40W
>chroma 50's, and 2 4' 40W Sylvania Plant and Aquarium bulbs, both tanks
>have DIY CO2 injection...
>
>My problem is: the past week or so, I have suddenly started getting that
>brown diatom algae stuff all over the place in both tanks (on the glass, on
>the leaves of the plants, the heaters, etc...). What is most likely causing
>this? Is there anything that I can do to stop it from growing, or should I
>just live with it and wipe it off ever few days?
Any book will tell you brown algae is a diatom and occcurs in low
light situations and you can sure ut by adding more light. The
books seem to be unanimous on this are are of course flat out
dead wrong.
I have about a dozen 2 gal. tanks in a wondow; 3 of them have
small light loving killies (Aphyosemion cyanostictum "SAM")
and the rest are daphia cultures - enough to feed all my
fish in small amounts daily. The killies get daphnia and
occasional feedings of grindal worms. The Daphnia seem to
feed on infusoria and algae - I don't feed them any more
although I used to feed them green water (unicellular algae,
not Euglena)
The daphnia tanks get brown algae the killi tanks
used to get a film of green algae but in the last
week are now growing hair algae. Go figure.
>> Subject: Re: Disinfecting
>>
>
>> The alcohol idea never crossed my mind as far as dissenting a tank is
>> concerned. However I think I can comment here safely that either type
>> of alcohol should be equally as effective. The alcohol will evaporate fairly
>> fast and not leave any residue.
>Bleach is cheaper and easier (if you protect your skin) so I use it even
>with a 5G jug of Propanol-2 sitting out in the shed. It also
>disintegrates proteins for a more certain disinfection that either kind
>of alcohol.
I use straight vinegar. If you've never cleaned a tank with this
stuff you don't know what squeeky clean glass is. Is there
anything that can survice this treatment ?
>Subject: Re: red lotus bulbs/banana plants
>>According to Rataj, "banana" plants grow in aquaria and the leaves can
Hmm, I wonder if I ask a question about Banana plants
get I get help with Tiger Lotus ? :-)
Lemme try that again.
I've grown these things before and they're one of
my favorite plants (I'm a sucker for red plants).
When I had them last time they were a round bulb with
a couple of small shoots sticking out. They grew
into a monster sized plants with huge red round
leaves but the plant was a separate entity form
the bulb - there was one stem-like thing connecting
the plant root mass to the bulb. I moved before I
had a chance to snip it and see if the plant would
develop a bulb or if the bulb would grow another.
So, these bulbs I have now have no growth coming out
of them whatsover and if they wern't hard as rock
I might think they're dead. I know that they like
massively heavily fertilization and I'm tempted to
make a small pot with sheep manure and peat covered
with a few inches of sand.
My questions really are:
1) Do these things normally go through
some sort of dormant phase, ie do I want or
should I do something to kickstart them ?
2) How deep should they be planted? Something
tells me they should be in the manure layer
and that might get them going again.
Anybody played with these things much?
--
Richard J. Sexton richard at aquaria_net
Maitland House, Bannockburn, Ontario, Canada, K0K 1Y0 +1 (613) 473 1719