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Re: Cloudy by day crystal clear by night
on 01:48 PM 8/26/99 , Richard Sexton wrote:
>I have a 40G tank with a bunch of plants and a large cology
>of Endlers that goes cloudy at night then clears up
>every day so that by about afternoon it's crystal clear
>again. Has anybody ever seen anything like that?
I've seen it every day for the last month or so in my 29G, and nearly
eliminated it. Not sure about your cloudiness, but mine is definitely green
water algae. Doesn't look green until I siphon it into a white bucket (!)
though.
After working on the nutrient problems that caused most of the other
algaes, this one kept getting worse. My theory is that it was caused by
ambient light. I keep my tanks on a late cycle, about noon to midnight, to
match my sleep schedule so I can see the fish. During the hours before
noon, filtered sunlight comes in and adds a bit of light; additionally, the
room lights were often on before or after the photoperiod.
I think the green water algae grows in this low light, while the regular
plants are still "asleep". When this problem was at its worst, the tank was
nitrate-limited and had an excess of phosphates. When the tank lights
turned on, I assume the higher plants (and higher alga) out-competed the
unicellular algae for phosphates, clearing the water.
This relates to the recent posts about green water and Calcium. For my
theory to hold, the entire colony of unicellular algae must die of
malnutrition within the space of a few hours. Perhaps this is possible.
There may also be a consumer that overcomes the algae after its growth
decreases.
To combat this, I have been leaving room lights off as often as possible,
and shifted the photoperiod closer to the real day/night cycle. Now I just
have a slight cloudiness in the morning, and it's usually gone by 3 or 4 pm.
On the other hand, I've also been adding KNO3 recently to combat the excess
of phosphates, and switched to TMG from Flourish. So other factors are
probably involved.
--
michael moncur mgm at starlingtech_com http://www.starlingtech.com/
"An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out."
-- Will Rogers