Re: Boiling alage to determine type: red

To: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
Subject: Re: Boiling alage to determine type: red
From: "John Y. Ching" <jyching at watnow_uwaterloo.ca>
Date: Mon, 7 Aug 1995 21:51:53 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <199508071939.PAA08800 at looney_actwin.com>

> From: ac554 at freenet_carleton.ca (David Whittaker)
> Date: Mon, 7 Aug 1995 07:57:32 -0400
> Subject: Boiling algae to determine type: red
> 
> I believe that it was Paul Kombholtz who recently said.....
> 
> >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?
> 
> My apologies to Paul if the attribution is incorrect.
> 
> Dave
> 
Dave,
I tried that trick, too. The red brush algae I have does not turn red 
_right after_ I boil it. If you leave the leaf in the water over night, 
within 24 hours the dead algae will turn red, if it's indeed red algae. I 
discovered this when I was too lazy to clean up the mess one night :-). 
The same thing happens if you treat the affected leaf/plant in 5% bleach. 
The dead brush/beard algae would turn red after a day.

> From: steveh at ilx_com (Steven Hicks)
> Date: Mon, 7 Aug 1995 11:36:32 -0400 (EDT)
> Subject: Re: Algae problems with a new tank
> 
> I'm trying to be patient, but I am having a horrible time with green water in
> my 2-3 month old planted tank.  Details are listed at the bottom of this 
> message, but basically after I added two Vitalites (I already had two Tritons)
> I got great plant growth, along with algae.
> 
> [detail about green water clipped]

Since your plants are all doing well, you may want to implement a few 
days (say 2-3) of complete darkness. Since I started having one dark day 
(Wed) each week, I've noticed significant reductions in certain types of 
algae (in my case, green dot algae). The darkness should not affect your 
healthy plants. In fact, I found that most of my plants show visible 
growth during the dark day, presumably because they have more time to 
convert stored energy from photosynthesis to starch. My H. polysperma 
often grows one inch on Wednesdays :-).

 John Y. Ching (jyching at watnow_uwaterloo.ca)    |
 Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence Lab	| 
 Department of Systems Design Engineering      	| 
 University of Waterloo, Canada            	|