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Algae Control
Mermaid wrote:
Just need a heads up on Algae Control. Since that was one of the main culprits of me ditching a sal****er reef system. Can you send me to some good articles on preventing it before it happens or recommend some good books for me to read? I was thinking my RO/DI unit might give me an advantage on the algae dept. Hope so. Also, can algae problems start with old tank syndrome? The last freshwater planted tank I had was up for 5 years and I knew I needed to start over because of all the accumulating crud in the undergravel filter ( for which I am not going to do this time). That is when I decided to try a reef tank. Bad decision on my part. I struggled for 3 years off and on. Not fun for me. Don't want to scrub rocks every weekend. Guess I learned the hard way and also I could not get any very good local support so maybe freshwater is my domain. Can's start yet on the tank because I am still trying to sell all of my rock, corals, equipment, etc. But chomping at the bit to give it a go. Patience, Grasshoppa. That coralline is going to be fun scrubbing off. My living room will smell like vinegar. A freshwater wantabe. Paulette Algae control is pretty easy. OTS can cause algae. The crud in the UGF breaks down and releases phosphate. So start with a good substrate - either a plant tank one like Flourite (rinse WELL), Onyx, or Eco Complete, or fine gravel or coarse sand with laterite clay in the bottom half (messy). My ideal setup would be Flourite over heating cables, but they don't make heating cables for small tanks. Second, pack the tank with healthy plants and provide them with good lighting (put daylight bulbs in your reef lights), CO2 or Flourish Excel, and fertilizer. www.gregwatson.com has great bulk stuff. Look for Tom Barr's old posts here to find out how to balance fertilizers. You can search on Google Groups. If you get NPK at 8-1-16, with adequate light, carbon, and trace elements, conditions are optimal for plants and they will mostly outcompete the algae. Third, populate the tank with algae eating fish, shrimp, and snails as you start to see some algae. You'll add Otocinclus first for diatoms and soft green algae, an Ancistrus spp. once you get enough fuzzy green algae for a pleco (be sure he has some wood too), a mystery snail (go to applesnail.net to learn the right kind) to eat dead plant leaves, and possibly siamese algae eaters if you get black brush algae showing up. Some folks are lucky enough to find the FW/brackish Nerites snails, which eat algae but not plants. Japanese (Amano) shrimp are cool too, but require a stable, well-cycled tank like all inverts. They will eat green algae off of your plants. Farlowella spp. (twig catfish) are good algae eaters for broadleaved plants like swords and also require a well-cycled tank and good water. Overall fish stocking should be light so phosphates aren't in excess, and yes your DI/RO unit will come in handy although you'll have to add buffer back. Seachem makes one that Tom Barr recommends, but I forget which. I'm sure you'll find it on Google because he's said it a million times. -- Elaine T __ http://eethomp.com/fish.html '__ rec.aquaria.* FAQ http://faq.thekrib.com |
#2
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So excess PO4 causes algae does it?
Really? How much would you like to bet in a fully planted tank on this? I have had 1ppm of available PO4 for over 15 years and no algae issues related in any way to PO4. So have 1000's of others. Where is my algae? I add KH2PO4 3-4x a week Regards, Tom Barr 3rd annual Plant Fest July 8-14th 2005! Get connected www.BarrReport.com Get the information |
#3
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Ditch the RO/DI idea. Plants don't care. They prefer harder water in
99% of the species and even those 2-3 plants will grow in harder water. UFG's can and do work but they are not needed and plants will do fine without them. I'd remove it and add Flourite with a little ground peat(about 1 handful, per sq ft) Focus on the plant's needs, light, CO2 and nutrients. Good plant growth and lots of plant biomass = poor algae growth. So add lots of weeds from day one. I mean pack the tank! Next, are you going to add CO2, or Excel? And how big is the tank and what is the GH and KH of your tap water? Regards, Tom Barr 3rd annual Plant Fest July 8-14th 2005! Get connected www.BarrReport.com Get the information |
#5
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Thanks to you all for helping me and giving me advice.
I guess I will be using Excel because I will not have the money to invest in CO2. My Tank is a 75 gal and I plan to use a Magnum 350 and my wet/dry trickle with the bioballs submerged. That will give me somewhere to put my heater instead of the tank. Unless they make heater cables for a 75? If you use cables do you need any other heater? Does it have a thermostat? Don't know what my tap water is. Going to have to get some tests for freshwater if I don't still have them in the cabinet. If I use my RO/DI unit then what buffer do I add to it. Someone told me that the RO/DI unit would be good if I decided to breed fish. Otherwise I guess I will sell it too. My husband will kill me on that one as much as the unit cost. So as I understand that if you pack the tank with plants from day one you can forget about cycling. Amazing. Even with having eventually angels? I have a powercompact lighting unit that has 110 watts. The bulbs are not new and they are not actinic. They are daylight balanced. I also have 1 strip 48" light that I thought I could add a plant light with. Would that work? Also if I put 3" of gravel+flourite in the 75, how much do I buy? Thanks for your time, Paulette wrote in message ups.com... Ditch the RO/DI idea. Plants don't care. They prefer harder water in 99% of the species and even those 2-3 plants will grow in harder water. UFG's can and do work but they are not needed and plants will do fine without them. I'd remove it and add Flourite with a little ground peat(about 1 handful, per sq ft) Focus on the plant's needs, light, CO2 and nutrients. Good plant growth and lots of plant biomass = poor algae growth. So add lots of weeds from day one. I mean pack the tank! Next, are you going to add CO2, or Excel? And how big is the tank and what is the GH and KH of your tap water? Regards, Tom Barr 3rd annual Plant Fest July 8-14th 2005! Get connected www.BarrReport.com Get the information |
#6
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On 2005-04-27, Mermaid wrote:
So as I understand that if you pack the tank with plants from day one you can forget about cycling. Amazing. Even with having eventually angels? http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_plant_newtank.htm -- "I have to decide between two equally frightening options. If I wanted to do that, I'd vote." --Duckman |
#7
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Mermaid wrote:
Thanks to you all for helping me and giving me advice. I guess I will be using Excel because I will not have the money to invest in CO2. My Tank is a 75 gal and I plan to use a Magnum 350 and my wet/dry trickle with the bioballs submerged. That will give me somewhere to put my heater instead of the tank. Unless they make heater cables for a 75? If you use cables do you need any other heater? Does it have a thermostat? Don't know what my tap water is. Going to have to get some tests for freshwater if I don't still have them in the cabinet. If I use my RO/DI unit then what buffer do I add to it. Someone told me that the RO/DI unit would be good if I decided to breed fish. Otherwise I guess I will sell it too. My husband will kill me on that one as much as the unit cost. They make heater cabels for 75 gallon tanks. I think you do still need a heater because the wattage is low on the cables. The cables create a very slow convective current through the substrate, keeping it aerobic and bringing nutrients down to be trapped on the laterite where the plant roots can use them. As for RO/DI, how's your tapwater? If you have good tapwater, then there's no reason not to use it since it comes with free buffering and trace elements. :-) My tapwater is hard and alkaline, pH 7.8, tastes bad, reeks of chlorine, and sometimes stresses my fish after water changes. I wish I had RO, despite what Tom says. For breeding sof****er species, RO/DI is very useful. I looked up the buffer for RO/DI, and it's Seachem Equilibrium to give some hardness, plus baking soda to give some alkalinity. So as I understand that if you pack the tank with plants from day one you can forget about cycling. Amazing. Even with having eventually angels? Yep. BUT you still have to start with only a few fish and add fish slowly. What's happened to me is that there are no ammonia or nitrite spikes, and bacteria gradually build up in the filter. As long as I add fish slowly, there's no real "cycle." There's actually a concept called the Dutch Aquarium (very similar to the Berlin reef) where only water movement is used, the tank is lightly stocked, and the plants provide all of the filtration. I have a powercompact lighting unit that has 110 watts. The bulbs are not new and they are not actinic. They are daylight balanced. I also have 1 strip 48" light that I thought I could add a plant light with. Would that work? Sounds like plenty of light to me. I personally prefer high CRI bulbs to plant lights but if you don't mind the purplish cast they're good for plants. Also if I put 3" of gravel+flourite in the 75, how much do I buy? Here's Seachem's recommendation. http://www.seachem.com/products/prod.../Flourite.html They actually say 2" rather than 3". I'm not sure why. I've had big sword plants put roots all the way to the bottom in 3" of gravel/laterite. Also, you have to rinse Flourite pretty extensively. Here's the best instructions I've seen so far. http://www.vickisaquaticplace.com/fluorite.html Thanks for your time, Paulette wrote in message ups.com... Ditch the RO/DI idea. Plants don't care. They prefer harder water in 99% of the species and even those 2-3 plants will grow in harder water. UFG's can and do work but they are not needed and plants will do fine without them. I'd remove it and add Flourite with a little ground peat(about 1 handful, per sq ft) Focus on the plant's needs, light, CO2 and nutrients. Good plant growth and lots of plant biomass = poor algae growth. So add lots of weeds from day one. I mean pack the tank! Next, are you going to add CO2, or Excel? And how big is the tank and what is the GH and KH of your tap water? Regards, Tom Barr 3rd annual Plant Fest July 8-14th 2005! Get connected www.BarrReport.com Get the information -- Elaine T __ http://eethomp.com/fish.html '__ rec.aquaria.* FAQ http://faq.thekrib.com |
#8
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Mermaid wrote:
Thanks to you all for helping me and giving me advice. I guess I will be using Excel because I will not have the money to invest in CO2. You may also want to look at setting up a soda-bottle DIY system. Depending on how you do it, it can be cheap (most of the cost is in the soda bottles, and you can drink that anyway.) |
#9
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