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Re: Algae Growth



Roger S. Miller wrote:
> Sorry to butt in, but just what is it that they aren't doing?  Are there
> symptoms?  For example, compared to previous conditions, are they light
> colored, thin stemmed, dropping older leaves, or something else?

Well, mostly they're just growing slowly. I remember I used to get a huge
pile of pruned plants every week. Now the amount I prune off is not even
close. For example, I'd always see my Sag's sending up new runners. Now this
happens quite rarely. In addition, my Ambulia used to be a lot bushier. Now
it's tall and thin. And yes, some of my plants are dropping older leaves.
But I think that's more due to the fact that I trip them from the top rather
than replanting the top and discarding the bottom, and that the leaves are
severely covered by algae.

> Hey, how do you get GH in your aquarium that's lower than GH in your tap
> water?  Oh, and with 10 GH out of the tank you probably don't need to
> add any form of magnesium.  The magnesium is already there.

Beats me. My GH has always been gradually decreasing. I thought it was
because of rapid Mg consumption. I know that my water probably has a
sufficient amount of Mg. But I was adding it just in case.

> In hard water phosphate can precipitate and become unavailable to
> plants.  The actual rate at which that happens depends on details in
> your tank.  I seem to recall a while back that Tom Barr reported some
> phosphate levels in his *hard* water tanks and showed that the
> concentration dropped quickly after the phosphorus was originally added
> - -- possibly too quickly to be accounted for by plant use alone.

I don't think my water qualifies. I did have a PO4 test kit once. That was
before I started dosing K. And my PO4 was sky high.

> What drudgery!  You will have better success if you use all of your
> tools -- herbivores, I mean.  Amano shrimp are elegent (sort of) but it
> takes a lot of shrimp before they're effective.  And they're expensive.

Then why do I need to put all this effort into solving this nutrient
problem? I can just put an army of SAE's in there and not even worry about
fertilizers or CO2. Are all the planted, algae-free tanks with high lighting
out there nutrient-balanced? I think very few of them are. They are
algae-free because their owners use algae eaters. I'm sure most people do
not put as much effort into their aquariums as I do. If it's this hard to
make a tank nutrient-balanced (as from my experience), then a lot of
hobbyists would quit if there were no algae eaters.
___
Alex R.
pcalex at yahoo_com