Damn Dan

[Anonymous]

It has been a while since I hung out at the plantedtank.com. Sorry to hear you have drained your planted tank. I am thinking about getting a CO2 cylinder this january and stop mixing yeast.

Welcome, Zaphod_Beeblebrox.
You last visited: 12-23-2003 at 04:46 AM
There are 72893 new posts since your last visit.

 

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I think planted tanks are beautiful; I'm just not very good at them them. I do have a minibow 7 planted tank at work.

 

[Anonymous]

I still have not achieved beautiful but I am trying. I need more color.

 

[Anonymous]

Trimmed back the amazon after checking to be sure. I still have a problem overcoming the MH to photograph. It never looks that blinding in person.

 

[Anonymous]

Nice tank. (IMO)

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks, it seems that all I did was fight algea blooms for the first six months. I have rubbed down plant leaves more than I have rubbed down my wife. But I kept reading that if you stick it out the blooms will die down. I lost some small plants that got choked off by whatever kind of fuzzy crap that just seemed to grow on my substrate and I also think I lost some fish to severe algea blooms. Kinda damned if you turn off the lights, the damn algea is hardier than the plants. As you can see only the hardiest of plants have made it. It seems like the red stem plants I had were the ones that got killed off first.

 

[Anonymous]

Is it normal to experience such algae blooms?

What can you attribute it to? Bad starting water?

 

[danmhippo]

Dave,

I think CO2 diffuser is gonna help you, if you can change the back ground to black, it would show off much better too. I would get some ground cover for your tank, some moss for the driftwood, and some med-tall plants to cover up some of the walls.

 

[Anonymous]

Is it normal to experience such algae blooms?

What can you attribute it to? Bad starting water?

From the people I have heard from yes you will have blooms in a new tank. How bad they are depends on how many fast growing plants you have and how good your CO2 is put into the water column. The blooms are worse the more light you use. With a 250w metal halide, I was getting some blooms untill I backed it down to 175w.

Dan I added a second diffuser. I have added some Java fern and also some petite annuba nana to the log. I have also added some tiger lotus that are adjusting to the metal halides.

 

[Anonymous]

Is it normal to experience such algae blooms?

What can you attribute it to? Bad starting water?

With heavily planted tank the norm is to not have algae blooms.


the plants consume the nutrients before algae gets a foothold. regardless of where the nutrients come from.

 

[Anonymous]

That depends on ther type of plants you have in your tank. You better really like stem plants if you want to out compete all algae blooms under high light conditions.

 

[Anonymous]

That depends on ther type of plants you have in your tank. You better really like stem plants if you want to out compete all algae blooms under high light conditions.

I have some baby water turtles that are in a 20 gallon long with about three inches of water. I had a carpet of green slimy algae all over the bottom. I put some hornwart in the tank. Within a week and a half the algae was completely gone. Evidently it secretes a toxic chemical that effects algae which I never believed until now.

 

[Anonymous]

That depends on ther type of plants you have in your tank. You better really like stem plants if you want to out compete all algae blooms under high light conditions.

I have some baby water turtles that are in a 20 gallon long with about three inches of water. I had a carpet of green slimy algae all over the bottom. I put some hornwart in the tank. Within a week and a half the algae was completely gone. Evidently it secretes a toxic chemical that effects algae which I never believed until now.

Naw it's a lot simplier than that. The hornwart was simply consuming the nutrients and therefore starving out the slime. And it probably shaded the slime so the slime didn't have the light it needed.

 

[Anonymous]

I am enjoying my little 30 gallon cube planted tank. In my brief experience C02 additions seems to really give the plants a boost to jump ahead of the algae - I still sadlly manged to get a few small tufts of brush algae on a piece of driftwood I got.

Also I learned early on to take it really easy on those liquid fertilizers!

 

[gpodio]

Hornwart is a great help, I use it in all my newly setup tanks. Being a floater it also has direct access to CO2 from the air which gives it another advantage, specially in non-CO2 tanks. Great for the pond too.

Giancarlo

 

[Anonymous]

I like Wisteria (Hygrophila difformis) It grows so fast it out competes algae. Even with all these plants to help with algae control the best thing I have ever put in my tank are the snails to constantly clean the leaves of the slow growing plants I have and also the driftwood. I think I have an army of over 50+ now.

 

[danmhippo]

That depends on ther type of plants you have in your tank. You better really like stem plants if you want to out compete all algae blooms under high light conditions.

I have some baby water turtles that are in a 20 gallon long with about three inches of water. I had a carpet of green slimy algae all over the bottom. I put some hornwart in the tank. Within a week and a half the algae was completely gone. Evidently it secretes a toxic chemical that effects algae which I never believed until now.

Naw it's a lot simplier than that. The hornwart was simply consuming the nutrients and therefore starving out the slime. And it probably shaded the slime so the slime didn't have the light it needed.

Right, but it also blocked light from everything else that you want to keep. The only thing left is hornwart and low light loving plants.

 

[Anonymous]

Fish, we have had pretty good success with using Seachem Excel liquid CO2 supplement. A double dose of it seems to "burn" the algae right off the leaves without hurting the plants.

 

[gpodio]

Is it normal to experience such algae blooms?

What can you attribute it to? Bad starting water?

IMO, too few plants for the amount of light. Even when everything is balanced a couple blooms here and there are normal initially, at least until the plants root in and start to use the nutrients in the water at a greater rate. I usually don't worry too much about any minor bloomes in the first month, but depending on the algae that blooms I may tweak things a little to reach a good balance in the long run.

I like Flourish Excel too, works well in both non-CO2 tanks and in CO2 tanks. Also does a good job on many types of algae when used in stronger doses as suggested. Just be careful if you have fish in there too, not sure what the maximum dose is when fish are in the tank. I've used 2-4 times the dose in plant only tanks, snails (the only inhabitants) weren't effected.

Giancarlo