[APD] RE: Algae

["Benjamin Hong" <bkhong at rogers_com>]

Well, Leif, my suggestion to you is just bide your time.  Trust me.  At some
point you will have so much algae it will start taking over the room.

Which leads me to my little problem.  Yes, you guessed it.  I am not
entirely sure how to identify the different kinds of algae, and my old
botany book from my days at university only teaches me how to identify them
at a cellular level.  This what I see:
a) Brown coloured stuff on bits of the substrate and the tank wall.  Thin
thin filaments coming off the leaves (my guess is they're green in colour,
but really I can't tell).

b) Stuff that coats my hornwort as if a caterpillar had spun a cocoon around
the whorls.  Also coats the leaves of my Giant Hygrophila like a membrane.
When I pull it off it looks fibrous, but all comes off as one big mass.
Earlier on (this being my second big outbreak in a fortnight) it had a
blue-green colour...which leads me to think it's actually
cyanobacteria....but again I don't really know.

c) Something edible to my Siamese Algae Eater.  He munches continually at
stuff on the Hygro leaves.  Sometimes, for brief moments he'll chomp some of
the membrane-y stuff I mentioned above, but usually moves on.  Generally, if
it's hard for me to see, he'll eat it.  There are also large masses of dark
green stuff on the stone I have in the tank, but he passes right over that,
too. I can only assume it's the same as the membrane-y stuff.

If anyone can help at least identify this stuff, I would be so incredibly
grateful.  My fish are getting stressed at me constantly digging away at
stuff in the tank.

Thanks!
Ben Hong


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