dosing and black fuzz algae

Re: dosing and black fuzz algae

That's not enough trace, that light is very high.

I add about 30mls min per week for this tank size. You add 7mls.

I'd get in there and clean the tank good, prune well, clean the filters, lightly vacuum the gravel when you prune/uproot those areas, then do the water change, then check the CO2 again, add the nutrients back etc.

I'd add: 1/2 teaspoon KNO3, 3x a week, KH2PO4, 1/16" or so.

Traces at 10mls 3 x a week.

Clean, preen, prune and repeat.

If the algae comes back, do the water change and re set again and check the CO2. Do all these steps.

After a week or two, if you have re set the CO2/Nutrients etc, you should see the response fairly fast.

Regards,

Tom Barr

 

Re: dosing and black fuzz algae

CO2, don't listen to the test kits too much, watch the fish and increase the bubble rate.

Make a small riccia stone or put some on a piece of wood. When it pearls well about 1/2 way through the day or earlier, then you are in good shape. Once you do this, add more PO4. Lileaopsis can get both of these algae fairly easily. Trim like grass, it'll grow back healthy. Amano's tanks has this plant and green spot as well and Anubias. He doesn't add PO4 though.

High PO4 will certainly reduce green spot, there have been many reports of it and I have not had green spot for many years. I hated that algae more than BBA.

Rapid response keeps algae from gaining a foothold abd becoming established. So adjust the PO4 and CO2 up, prune and trim well. These indicators are more important than test kits whichg often have issues or systems to dose CO2.

Regards,

Tom Barr

 

Re: dosing and black fuzz algae

Just keep in mimnd, the algae are very good water quality indicators.
Better than the plants, so while the plants might appear to be doing alright, in many cases they are, the algae are much faster at response.

So BBA=> something is wrong with CO2.
GSA=> check CO2 then add PO4

And so on, I'll have a listing of things to do for sopecific algae as time premits.

And unlike other tables of algae and with their "cures", this will actaully work and has been tested.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

Re: dosing and black fuzz algae

I was long aware he started adding PO4 to his series, they are _very_ dilute as well.

Most food is very low in PO4 since many assume that is causes algae and heavy in N.

His tanks are not heavily stocked.
I call that moderate to low.
His lighting is lower than many folks also, if he uses more light, he uses it in a dawn dusk type of method and only hads full power 3-5 hours a day.

That slows the growth down, thus the need for dosing.
Golks that bhave growth issues or cannot keep up with things can switch to less light ot add only full power during the middle of the day, or they can use slower growing plants.

Most shrimp/fish etc and other things they put into food is proteins so this is not surprising.

Adding fish foods with more K+, PO4, iron etc is a decent idea but applies only to planted tank with CO2/high light etc in many cases.
Not sure there is a high demand for that really.
We added PO4 long before he did and explored the limits of nutrients.
He, SeaChem, Kent, Dr. Mallick, There's another brand I'm forgetting here(an all in one thing with PO4) etc and others soon followed after I got poo pooed for a few years and folks finally started trying it out and saw for themselves.

His readings and stat's are not in line with observations and plant health for the older books. He's no plant physiologist either.

He adds just "enough" and suggests this is the best way, but when I directly called him on it, he said excess causes algae.

Right, sure you know what your talking about and have tested it and investiagted this..........I think not.

That was not protecting a business secret or anything, that was simply not knowing what he was talking about.

Many folks will not question him, I have no problem asking questions and calling bullshit.
He's good aquascaper, no one doubts that, the best around and one of the best photographers of tanks as well. But when it comes to this stuff, I am going to be very tough to put one over on.

Oddly, my cohorts in my field have no issues with what I contend, they think it makes perfect sense. It's folks that are not in the know that give me the most grief and say stuff that I disagree with.

I doubt he would argue back, he'd say something funny and we'd joke about it. But to the common person, he can say most things and they'd believe it.
He does honestly want to help folks and have more folks keep nice well scaped tanks, we have the same goal, just coming at it from different prespectives, he's a better scaper and phtogrpaher than me, I'm a better researcher and physiologist than he is.

But both together makes for a better world for planted hobbyists.
That's both our goals.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

Re: dosing and black fuzz algae

Yes, Amano does add PO4 to his fert's.
Read his readings in those books of his, 0.1ppm of PO4 and 15ppm of CO2.
Those are not readings that apply to those tanks.

He still has green spot algae on his anubias leaves, see cover page:
July 2001 vol 69, look at some of the Aunbias in the photo's in other books.

There's also a likely other source, the substrate, we know it has NH4 added.
Green spot algae: That can be addressed by adding more PO4.

0.15ppm/day might be okay for some plants and growth, but perhaps not enough to reduce green spot.

What kit did you use?

Like wise, some considerations, photo ops are not regular stocking rates.
You also assume all the PO4 and N are converted to waste, this is not true, some is retained by the fish. Fish were even considered to remove and export PO4 from some lakes in Florida. Dead fish evolve a great deal of NH4 and PO4.

The light routines he set up, and yes, I've talked to him and so have other in person on more than one occasion about this and he discusses it.........are not high light set ups, they might have a lot of light on there, but he only adds all the light for 3 hours. The rest of the time, it's low.

The 60 cm tanks are 18-20 gal(80 liters approx) and that's 4 w/gal, not 5.8 w/gal The lights can be turned on in series.

I do not know what the tap water is like where he lives.

15-25 small tetras is pretty standard stocking, a little light for me.
65? That's getting awful heavy and too much for a 20 gal tank.
But 20 or so main fish and algae eaters, that's a nice tank.

Adding 0.05ppm of organically bound PO4 is different than adding inorganic PO4 also.

PO4 relative to N, the fish foods are always weighted to N vs a plant dry weight (10:1 in most aquatic plants but that varies).

The ADA brighty series might have a bit more PO4(and NO3 etc) than the others.......

0.15ppm should be fine for most situations. I have seen a fair amount of green spot algae on many of his Anubias leaves in the covers and the main layout photo's. Maybe it's not enough.

The CO2 readings cannot be right though.

It's wise to make the fertilizers dilute though. Sell more, and impacts the same value, you buy a large bottle, you think you get more.
Then you can tailor the dosing for tanks with less lighting, more fish , fewer fish etc and the other variables consumers might have.
TMG and SeaChem suggest lower amounts than many CO2 enriched tanks need for this reason.

Amano has also mentioned a few times he has trouble growing certain plant species together. At lower nutrients levels, some plants can outcompete others for nutrients. I've yet to see plant plant interactions in any species. I've thought I've seen it a few times, but then when the nutrients where raised, the effect went away.

If you look at his tanks at the visits, you'll see few fish in those tanks.
All have wheels so you can move them around and take photo's.


Regards,
Tom Barr