Re: Algae and Breeding

[Chris Browning <fisher25000 at yahoo_com>]

Thanks Ken and Scott :) I'll give it a try once I find a home for the baby danios where they won't be eaten. I'll post if anything significant shows up.

unclescott <unclescott at prodigy_net> wrote:Chris wrote...
> A while ago my 12 gallon with Danios in it became over-run with, I'm not
sure as to the name...

Actually I've called it a lot of names. ;)

As much as I hate it however, I would sure agree with Ken that hair algae is
suitable for killies.

Because I dislike it for aesthetic reasons, along with a concern for the
competative welfare of other plants, doesn't mean that the killies don't
like it.

I recall taking a big handful of it out of an Ep. bifaciatus tank and,
guessing that there would be eggs, gave it a cursory look-see. I then got
more serious and pulled over 150 bifaciatus eggs from it.

Yours is an interesting question as to whether peat diving or hard driving
killies could become tangled up in it. Most of the time I would guess not.
It is in a more "natural" form growing in a tank when the killies might
snuggle up to it while spawning. I'm sure your Lucania goodei spawn in
similar algaes in the American South. Whether a big honking pair of
Fundulopanchax could get fatally entangled, I wonder.

Maybe someone on this list has some empirical evidence of such an event.

For am individual with too much time on their hands, it would be interesting
to set up a pair of gardneri in a five or ten gallon tank with gravel. A
large mop, reaching top to bottom coud be put into one end of the tank. A
similar sized quantity of hair algae (not closely packed from removal) could
be put in the other end. The gardneri should be well fed with live foods.

After a couple of days, the gardneri would be removed. The mop could then be
removed and harvested. Then the algae would be removed and harvested.
Finally the gravel could be "vacuumed" with a gravel grunger though a fine
meshed net.

I would hazard a guess that the gravel and the hair algae would vie for the
medium holding the most eggs. Just because we dictate what the killies have
available to spawn in, doesn't mean that it is best. Obviously real annual
killies would leave a lot more eggs in whatever substrate was available.

(Also the algae would offer the better surfaces for growing microscopic
foods such as rotifers.)

There is even a "hairball" type of algae now being offered for sale to
aquatic plant enthusiasts. It is kind of striking, but not in my tanks.

I would still recommend a "natural set-up" of gravel (about the size of
one's little fingernail) Java moss, Java fern and a floating layer of water
sprite. For collecting eggs, a long mop, spongefilter and maybe a couple of
inert rocks to hide behind in a bare bottomed tank would be the ticket.
Check under the sponge filter from time to time too. :)

But I'm not a killifish. Just a killinut.

All the best!

Scott



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