"Elaine T" wrote in message
.. .
Cool! That's great news. I'm so glad they settled into the tank. I've
liked SAE since I found my first real ones many years ago - they're gentle
enough to be tankmates for just about anything, yet lively and always
cruising and grazing. I'm not at all surprised that they're after the
green fuzz. They seem to like BBA first, and other soft green algaes
second. Heh, plus any other sort of fish food that lands in the tank.

My SAEs love to swim in the shoal with the Hockey Tetras. They are also
direct feeders I noticed today, they swim up to near the tank top and eat
flake food directly, which I find a bit strange, since they spend a lot of
time (when they settle) grazing on that brown shite that has taken hold on
many things in the tank. They do a better job on the plants than the Mystery
Snail too, as far as cleaning plant leaves of diatom deposits.

I am starting to wonder if I have enough light actually. I calculated it to
be 1.24WpG; I do get streaming pearling, bubble pearling about 4 or 5 hours
after the lights come on, and my CO2 is about 15ppm going off my pH (6.8)
and KH (5dKH/98.5ppm) readings.

I just started a daily fertilizer routine, but I am wondering if fertilizing
only in the water column is going to be enough. The Blue Stricta's prolific
new growth seems to be more yellow than it's older leaves, and the Asian
Ambula gets light green new tips which upon maturation seem to turn a rusty
brown colour (seems to be diatom city on this plant).

I gently "scrub" a lot of the leaves on my broad leaved plants with a very
soft toothbrush, when doing water or filter media changes or maintinence
because if I don't they all end up covered in brown stuff. It's really
annoying and I was hoping the little SAEs would help me with this task (as
they do, but there's only two of them and they are small atm).

Any way I am still patiently waiting for the chemistry to settle in this
relatively new tank, and I was wondering if fertilizing at this stage is the
wisest thing to do? For the record, I am dosing 1/2 the recommended amount
of liquid fertilizer, to make sure I don't upset any more of the chemical
balance in the tank, or heaven forbid a green algae outbreak on top of the
brown stuff. The fertilizer I am using has no phosphate or nitrate according
to the label.

I don't want any of my fish to die either from chemical imbalance, but I
would like big dark green leaves on my plants, lots of pearling and two
healthy and robust SAE's at least 3" long

Oz

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My Aquatic web Blog is at http://members.optusnet.com.au/ivan.smith


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__ Elaine T __
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