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Re: Monster hair algae
>>Hi William,
I have never had this one as a plague but it was healthy and I could not
scrub it off a particular piece of driftwood I had hanging at the back of
the tank. It was protected by hornwort that kept the angelfish from it.
Every time I removed the extra hornwort the angels found it and munched
away. The hornwort was back in a couple days so the angels did not have a
chance to take it back completely. After I added CO2 using a gas tank, no
more hair algae. I do now have SAEs, swordtails and platies that enjoy
fine
leaved green plants [grrr] so maybe that is the reason it has not
appeared
since. That tank was not fertilized much and also had green fuzzy on the
sword leaves [in spite of otos and snails] and a little green spot on the
glass.
One of my female swordtails is a terrific algae eater, I even saw her
pecking at BGA when it was a plague in my tank. It would be nice if there
was some way you could tell which fish would be more interested in
picking
at algae when you were looking at them in the store! Maybe choose ones
that
are busy picking while they are in the store tank? They do seem to vary
in
their interest in algae.
Why is your nitrate so high? With the few fish in the tank, plants plus
thriving hair algae it could be very low. That much nitrate is bad for
fish,
is it an old test that could be testing incorrectly? Is there a lot of
nitrate in your tap water? What plants do you have in the tank beside the
non thriving sword plants?
The swords are just maintaining, waiting for conditions to improve. Are
the
roots okay or rotting? New leaves put up? More light is the key thing
they
would like to see first, I bet. A small piece of Jobe's fern and palm
fertilizer stick near the roots would be the next pick me up.
Kathy in Southern California <<
Angelfish, too, huh? Sounds like I've got a lot of choices in what I can
get to eat hair algae!
About the high nitrate... I have no idea. It wasn't my test kit. :-) (At
the moment, I don't even own any test kits...) My LFS did the free water
test for me, so I'm not even positive what unit of measurement they're
using. (I sorta thought it looked high, though...)
BTW, so lone platies can be aggressive? Interesting. I know that the one
platy I have used to beat on my betta (the betta now lives in another
tank. Some of my friends thought it was hilarious that a fish related to
the guppy would get the better of a Siamese fighting fish)!
As to insuficient lighting... I live in California. :-( I don't think I'm
ready to up the wattage, but I might try replacing the bulbs with "plant
bulbs". They seem to be growing new leaves (one sent up a flower stalk a
while back, and another divieded), and the last time I moved them the
roots look OK...
Other plants: a C. balansae (it used to be green, then it spend a few
weeks in a tub outside, and turned deep red! wow...). Some Java fern on a
hunk of driftwood, some short Hygrophila-ish stems, an clump of water
sprite, and a forest of some unidentified pink-green-ish stem plant that
has taken over half the tank. :-)
Oh, yes, as you can probably tell--I'm cheap. :-)
William
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