[APD] keys to an algae-free low-light tank

["Kinney, Travis" <kinney at pdtarchs_com>]

James,

During the summer with house renovations and such I've let two of my tanks
slow way down. They are both well established with lots of plants. I just
was consistent about maintenance so I opted to slow things down until the
snow starts falling. Winter is my underwater greenery season!

This is what I did.
On my 29G tank that has Amer. val, spiral val., crypts, hairgrass,
microsword, hygro, elodea, Aponogetin and a couple others I can't remember
the names of. Well, I disconnected the co2 and slowly stopped the ferts. I
was planning to disconnect one of the 30watt PC bulbs (I have 2), but the
val kept growing so well that it covered most of the water surface. So the
val, cut down the light load to the rest of the tank and the val was still
perling because it loved so much light. It's been great running the tank
like this because all I've been doing is feeding the fish and maybe changing
the 30% water every three weeks. Fish seem happy. I'm also running the tank
without a filter. All I have is a very small powerhead running. I plan to
speed things back up this winter while I'm spending time in front of the
woodstove. My hairgrass is even short, like 3"! Go figure. Crypts are doing
great. The only plant that seems to continue to spread is the val.

My other slow tank with no filter and no light other than daylight, is a 10G
tank with anubias, glosso, micosword, driftwood and lots and lots of baby
ammano shrimp. Will crank this up this winter too. No fish, in this one,
just raising the shrimp.

-Travis
_______________________________________________
Aquatic-Plants mailing list
Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
http://www.actwin.com/mailman/listinfo.cgi/aquatic-plants