Bill Kirkpatrick wrote in message . ..
Principal causes of
BGA are 1) dumb luck and 2) excess nitrates.

God does not play dice and I don't get BGA so I don't accept no#1.

Excess NO3?In terms of what? For the BGA? They live abd bloom in water
with 0.1ppm of NO3 no problem at all. So unless it's 50-75ppm etc,
enough to seriously destablize a tank, I don't buy no2# either.

BGA and most other algae appear when something runs out, rather than
somethuing becoming excessive.

Phosphate is a more likely root cause. Temp makes
everything cold blooded, and one-celled, "go faster".

PO4 causes BGA?
That's simply wrong.

Search the web for PMDD, or "Poor Mans Dupla Drops". Not so
much for the formula, but it's development came from quite a
bit of interesting research regarding algae.

But the assumption made about excesses causing algae is wrong.

Bottom line, higher plants apparently store Phosphate, algae
(being a 1 celled plant) has no place to store anything.

You are wrong.
Many/most species of algae can store PO4 for up to 100 generations and
survive at far below limiting conditions for plants.

If
you maintain 0 Phosphate - algae can't get any.

Oh yes they can. Fish food, and plant leeching is plenty for algae.
They might slow down some, but they will still grow fine, BGA is no
exception.

When tiny
peaks happen (like feeding time), the "hungry" higher plants
suck it out in far before algae "grow into it".

A "sick" plant gthat does not have it's growth and mainteance nutrient
requirements not being met is not going to "eat".
If the plant has what it needs to grow well, then it will do well and
the algae will not.
Plants need far more nutrients relative to biomass than algae.

It's like having a mouse and an Elephant and feeding both the same
amount and then deciding to feed less. Which will starve?

Floating Hornwort, is my answer (bill has Phosphate in his
tap - that makes bill sad)

I had it(PO4) for decade, I loved it and so did my plants.

and good light. And, yea, use
PMDD if you use fert at all. When you toss a handful of
Hornwort, the key is you're tossing a chunk of Phosphate.
Neat thing about it, when your water is in trouble it grows
"real fast" and both sucks nutrient and shades the lower
tank. Keep a tastefully blob bobbing around, if it starts
to "explode", let it. When the top of your tank is well
covered, to some depth, yank half. The deeper you let it
grow, the faster the process works.

Getting the plants to grow better will help,but the cause is wrong.

Adding KNO3 regularly will generally cure BGA after you kill it off
first by doing a 3 day blackout, combined with 2 dosings after 50%
water changes right before and right after a blackout. Then regular
routine dosing of KNO3.

Plants don't grow well when they don't have enough GH, CO2, NO3, PO4,
K+, and traces, you add these regularly, along with weekly water
changes, this prevents anything from building up too high, and the the
frequent 2-3x a week dosings will prevent anything from running out.

Good plant growth = no algae.

Regards,
Tom Barr


If you yank once a week, you will eventually notice a week
were the top didn't end up covered. Let that go another
week, the yank half. Soon you'll notice it takes quite a
few weeks to cover the tank. Now you can prune back and
maintain a more tastefully sized clump.

Arg, a tank 1/3 full of Hornwort, yuck. Well, choose,
Hornwort once and again, or algae full time.

******************************
Dunter Powries wrote:
Brian wrote in message
...

All else being equal, will warmer water produce more algae? Blue-green
algae in particular? Just curious, as I have more algae than usual, with
no other parameter changes I know of besides temp.


Yes.

However, warm water probably isn't the proximate cause. Principal causes of
BGA are 1) dumb luck and 2) excess nitrates.