Empty wrote in message . ..
"Dan Drake" wrote in
news:vhIsdqY67dTD-pn2-4tZMfVbxteyh@localhost:

A lot of people talk of _hair_ algae, specifically, being promoted by
high Fe concentration. I wonder if there's something to that. (But
what does it matter? If people are adding iron in order to grow
plants, they surely have algae-eating fish, and they'll never see hair
algae. If they don't have algae eaters, it's hopeless anyway.)

I have seen this in action.

One of my eels (a yellow-tailed spiny eel) dug up a laterite ball
inadvertently. I only noticed because hair algae came in like mad, fast
enough that I could see lots of stubble despite the two large and
industrious SAEs in the tank. When I buried the laterite again, the hair
algae ebbed.

~Empty


Well, pulling up substrate pulls up much more than simply iron.
Pulls up NH4/lowers the O2 levels in a tank, there are many things
this does beside pull up iron.
That's why focusing on the water column and the effects these
nutrients have on it allows for a much clearer picture of what's
really going on with algae.

After all, algae do not have roots so if it's happening in the water
column, you should be able to isolate it.

Then you can use this same approach to consider the relative efeects
of a substrate on plant health if you have mastered the water column.

Regards,
Tom Barr