Re: [APD] How to fight GDA?

[Thomas Narten <narten at cs_duke.edu>]

> I am having a 90g planted tank and its about 8 months old. As with any new
> tank setup I also had my share of algae but one by one all came and went
> off. The only thing which is really hounding me is the GDA on the glass
> walls. I have tried letting it be there for a month or so and then scrape
> the walls with regular w/c (the day of the scraping, 2 back to back w/c,
> followed by two 60%w/c on the next 2 days). I hope this time I will be able
> to get rid of them but then I am not sure. Last time it did come back. Now
> what's the cause of this & how can I get rid of them?

Well, I have had GDA for quite a while now (months), and it is tough
to get rid of. One of the big problems for me is that the plants can't
get in front of it, and starve it out. That is, even stem plants like
ludwigia, will be coated with the stuff in less than a week after new
growth. Thus, the plants just can't get ahead.

In my tanks, I can see the algae on the glass 36 hours after scraping,
and the tank looks awful after 4 days. Cleaning the glass has the
problem that one can see some of the algae floating off into the
water. Some of it inevitably floats away as you scrape.

I've tried running a diatom filter (it turns green in 1-2 days), but
that has not been enough to get ahead.

It has been sugggested that a UV filter might help (to zap the
spores). I'd be interested in hearing from others on this.

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