Re: [APD] algae / my tanks

[Scott Scheibe <dsscheibe at earthlink_net>]

At 08:39 AM 3/4/2005 -0500, S. Hieber wrote:

        It looks a lot like the Gyironcheilus, but just forward of the 
dorsal fin back to the tail it has a dark stripe on it's sides.  They are 
about an inch and a half in length.  Thanks for the warning, I will keep an 
eye on them, one is in the 10 gallon which has five Serpae Tetra , a Blood 
Fin Tetra and two apple snails.
        The other is in the 44 gallon corner tank which is between two 
windows and had no plants so algae was a big problem.  It currently has 2 
black Angels, 6 long fin blue Dannios, 4 Julii corries,  2 Clown Loaches 
(took care of a LOT of small snails that I think hitch hiked on some 
plants), a candy stripe Pleco (looks different from the one below the 
Gyinocheilus, white/gray stripes are narrow and the main color mostly dark, 
has the same pattern all over.  I've noticed it changes tint depending on 
it's surroundings), and a black mystery snail.  I'm thinking of adding a 
few Swordtail.   Working on making this a planted tank, but have a light 
problem, the hood has two openings for 18" light strips, came with one. But 
I have not found another and a 20 is wider as well as longer and won't 
clear either the filter, or the feeding flip up cover.  It is a tall corner 
tank so it doesn't have a lot of bottom space for planting.
        It currently has a couple different sword plants, floating 
Anacharis and a Ludwigia needleleaf.  The Lud isn't doing so well, I'm sure 
it needs more light.  I want to add more plants, but until the  light issue 
is solved there isn't much point. I've been thinking some hornwort for the 
background and maybe dwarf hair grass.  It has a large piece of drift wood 
with a small hollow the loaches inhabit.
        The swords and lud are planted in three small Hagen plant rocks, 
which I modified.  They came with one little pocket with four holes in the 
bottoms, which were just bigger than the plastic pots the plants were 
originally in, the rest of it was open on the bottom.  So I cut the pocket 
out with my rotary tool,  silicone some screen to the bottom and filled 
them with small gravel (keeps the sand from filtering through the screen) 
onyx sand.  I put the rest of the sand in the tank which has fairly large 
gravel in it, was about all I could find that was smooth around here.   I 
only put them in a couple weeks ago, the large sword has really taken off, 
the other two not much change.  The plant rocks were my solution to 
disturbing the roots every time I cleaned the gravel.  The large sword 
especially has prolific roots, which are already growing out of the bottom 
of the screening.  I am supplementing with Flourish and Flourish 
excel.  I'd like to replace the large gravel with some small gravel and 
more substrate, maybe onyx gravel.  Is the onyx gravel smooth?  The Onyx 
Sand had a lot silt which plugged up my sponge filter when I put it in the 
tank and I was concerned with it's effect on the fish, clouded up the tank 
for a few hours.

> Do you know what fish this was? If it was Gyrinocheilus
> Aymonieri ( see, for example,
> http://www.azgardens.com/algae_eating_fish.php )
> then a small caveat is in order.
>
> These fish can be helpful with algae when young; less so
> when older when they seem to favor feeding off the slime
> coat on other fish. Contraindicated for example, for a
> discus tank. They've been known to become aggressive with
> age. However, there are reported cases where they leave
> certain other fish alone.


   D. Scott Scheibe
<mailto:dsscheibe at earthlink_net> 
<http://home.earthlink.net/~dsscheibe/>

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