Treadalgae vs. Amanoshrimps

Anti-Pjerrot

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Apr 5, 2006
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54L moss tank, 4 weeks old since redecorating.

Treadalgae infested all moss and anubias... Were already in moss, but diddent grew before redecorating.

30 amanoshrimps introduced 23/12-2007 6.40 pm:

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Went to christmas dinner and came back - 42 hours after amano release:

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Thank you amano shrimp...

Now to sell all shrimps for 20% more than i gave
 

Tom Barr

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Jan 23, 2005
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So, are you a believer in Amano shrimps now?
hehe

They certainly make it easy.

Regards,
Tom Barr
 

Anti-Pjerrot

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Apr 5, 2006
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Always has been - just never documented it before like this.

I always used them as preventive means, and never had tread algae problems, but this time i redid the tank totally, and they came like *bam*...

Today i plumped a piece of driftwood with Riccardia graeffei totally covered in treadalgae... the driftwood had only to tuch the bottom before it was attacked by amano...
I havent looked at it this evening, but im pretty sure its all gone by now.

This tread was intended to envoke people that havent used amano shrimps before, to start now.

No chemicals - just young amano shrimps.
 

Tom Barr

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I've never liked chemical removal methods.

Herbivores are nice, but often times, we cannot use them for other reasons, and learning more about algae and why it appears, is induced and grows well, without herbivores.....is a critical question/s.

Basically we can learn to do a better job growing plants without the herbivores than relying on them.

But for times when we do slack off, they do the work that we would rather not, and they do add a layer of security and resiliency to the system.

I have whimple piranha, yet they do not bother the Amano shrimp, yet in a larger pleco tank, they eat them asap. Fish behavior plays a large role, I like Altum angels, but they will hunt th Amano's down, same with some discus.

So trying to figure out more broad based cures for various types of algae and why they occur, so we can set up layers of redundacy and stop it before it can get a chance to grow seems the wisest path for control.

This also tends to provide better growing conditions for plants.

Thread algae and most green algae in generally seems to do quite well when my CO2 is reduced/declines, Amano and several others using the full line of ADA have also mentioned this.

I've seen it perhaps 30-50X over the years in good otherwise algae free tanks(the control) and then repeated it to reduce and remove the hair algae.

Plants will still grow etc with the Amanos and no algae, which is generally what folks want, but you can still improve and be even better off by learning more than the immediate issue/urgency through better plant growing conditions.

This stops the issue at the root.
Herbivores, even these, are icing on the cake so to speak.

They also are good at Riccia and other fine needle/fine fronds.

When you have dramatic growth rates also...the plants outpace and bury the algae. I recently did this with a couple of species.

Regards,
Tom Barr