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Aquatic Plants Digest V1 #230
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To: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
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Subject: Aquatic Plants Digest V1 #230
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From: glen at harlie_pps.com (Glen Osterhout)
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Date: Mon, 7 Aug 95 16:13:02 EDT
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>Date: Mon, 7 Aug 1995 07:57:32 -0400
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>From: ac554 at freenet_carleton.ca (David Whittaker)
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>Subject: Boiling algae to determine type: red
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Cc: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
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In-Reply-To: Aquatic-Plants-Owner at actwin_com's message of Mon, 7 Aug 1995 15:39:01 -0400 <199508071939.PAA08800 at looney_actwin.com>
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>I believe that it was Paul Kombholtz who recently said.....
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>>I have noticed that red algae (which normally looks dark green) turns
>>bright red when exposed to hot water. Take a sample and boil it if you
>>want to be sure of what you're dealing with. You can also use tap water
>>as long as it gets reasonably hot.
>
>Well, I boiled an anubias blade with a bit of red algae attached to
>it for a couple of minutes. The algae was dark green both before and
>after the treatment. It was about 4 mm in length and appeared similar
>to what The Optimum Aquarium labels red algae on page 123, item #2.
>What gives? Any comments?
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>My apologies to Paul if the attribution is incorrect.
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>Dave
I wrote that after noticing that the tufts of red algae that I had been
trying to scrape off my Eheim surface extractor (using hot tap water) had
turned bright red when I put it back in the aquarium. Since then I read
somewhere that you can use a solvent of some sort to remove the chlorophyll.
Maybe it was the combination of hot water and vigorous scrubbing that gave
me the result I saw; I assumed the hot water did it, but I never tested that
theory. Unfortunately I don't recall the name of the solvent. Anyone?
Glen