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Re: Aponogeton madagascariensis dormancy and Baby angels



> 
> From: dwebb at ti_com (David W. Webb)
> Date: Wed, 03 Jan 96 15:23:40 CST
> Subject: Baby angels as algae eaters.
> 
> I had never noticed it before, but a few posts recently have reminded me of a 
> something that I noted the last time I got baby angelfish.  
> 
> They would pick at algae.  I don't know whether they ate it or not, but they 
> sure picked at it and were good at cleaning things off.
> 
> Has anyone else noticed this, and more important, has anyone kept them 
> successfully on primarily vegetative matter?
> 
I've noticed that my 2-week old baby angels often pick at the algae, but 
I am not sure if they are eating it. I did leave them for about 10 days 
without any food during the Christmas holidays when I went to my parents' 
and after I got back, I found most of the babies still alive and much 
bigger than when I left them. They were only 5 days old when I left, and 
they reside in a 10gal tank with some floating plants and tons of algae.

On a related note, I found the baby apple snails excellent eaters of all
types of algae. My pair of adult apples produced about 100 babies over the
last few months and I noticed that the babies were very efficient at
cleaning most types of algae. I threw about 35 of them in my 20gal tank
used as a "holding tank" for some of my cuttings and they cleaned the tank
very well after a couple of days without harming the H.  polysperma
cuttings. As an experiment, I tooks a large sword leaf covered in brush
and thread algae from another tank and put it in the snail tank. Within 5
min the snails converged on the leaf and took care of the algae in less
than 30min, without doing any visual damage to the leaf. 

> From: Stephen.Pushak at saudan_HAC.COM
> Date: Wed, 3 Jan 96 18:52:00 PST
> Subject: Aponogeton madagascariensis dormancy
> 
> It sounds as if you've had some go into the dormant state and then
> resume growing. Did you have to take any steps to initiate this
> transition to springtime? My experiments with maintaining a strict
> 12hrs of lighting have not succeeded in keeping them from dormancy
> and I've never had one resume growing after dormancy. I think the
> bulbs are large enough to do it and I think temperature is the
> trigger.
> 

How do I know it's about to go into the dormant state? Mine recently went 
through a crazy growing cycle and at one time had 7 flowering stalks at the 
same time. Since the flowering and seeding, the growth has slowed 
somewhat. What visual signs do I look for? I had to move it (it was 
taking over one side of the tank with over 50 leaves) a couple of days 
ago; hopefully what happened to Steve won't happen here.

- John Ching