Re: [AGA Member] Soft water management

["S. Hieber" <shieber@yahoo.com>]

Hello again Dennis,

For along time folks said P causes algae.  IN certain
situations it surely does.


I'm not claiming to be an expert on algae nor a chemist. 
I'm just giving my limited experience  -- but what I've
tried is based on, guided by, a lot of experience from
genuine experts.

Anyhow, the effects of N and P on algae aren't the same if
you are feeding plants than in a virtually plantless (fish
only) tanks.  And again, things would seem to be very
different yet in lakes and ponds. . . . 

But in planted aquaria, as Tom Barr told me, "Stop starving
your plants." Grow healthy plants and the algae will pretty
much take care of itself (with appropriate due diligience,
of course).  Put another way, plants do very well when they
have enough nutrients to go with the amount of light an
CO2.  When plants do well, the algae pretty much seems not
to.  When things get out of whack for plants, algae seems
to do very well.

I think this is what June was talking about when she said
"balance."  But I don't want to put words in her mouth. 
And if I've stated things wrongly, the errors certainly
didn't come from her.

Anyhow, I find a good kit, LaMotte's, is useful to
establish how a tank is behaving and what food, filtering
and waterchange routines yield waht levels of PO4 and NO3. 
Once I'm comfortable with that, I lay off the testing
unless something seems to be veering off course -- Hey,
where did the BGA come from.

Some of the folks around here, being much more experienced,
do quite well without testing allthe time -- they seem to
get a good feel bor what's going on by watching the plants.


But for an example, I have 6 gal. planted at work. Low
light level and no added CO@ but some SeaChem Excel added
along with TMG and KH2SO4 for the potassium.  Tank ran
pretty good and algae was tame for while but was slowly
worsening.  I measured  PO4 around 0.2 or so, that
neighborhood.  I started dosing Seachem phosphorus along
with the other stuff I mentioned, and things got much
better -- more robust plants and algae problem dwindled.  I
ended up getting a little ahead of the game with PO4 and
nitrogen levels started running low.  Basically, I've been
playing around with adding more of this, a little less of
that until things seems stable.  PO4 runs about 0.8 - 1.0
after a water change and stays pretty stable with minor
dosing.  The NO3 hangs in there around 10-20 ppm.  Haven't
got that one as stable yet, but I'm getting there.  All the
plants are doing better under less than 2 wpg and as far as
algae, it my best behaved tank -- there's a little on the
driftwood and I have to sponge off a few spots on the
"glass" about once a every week or two.

Other folks do successful tanks other ways, I'm sure.

sh
--- Dennis Sheridan <dilvish@pacbell.net> wrote:
> Thanks, Scott
> 
> From: "S. Hieber" <shieber@yahoo.com>
> 
> > I guess that depends on who's doing the recommending.
> 
> But of course!
> 
> > 1.0 ppm.  In fact, a good sign for me that PO4 is too
> low
> > is if BGA starts to show up.  Bringing the PO4 back
> into
> 
> Ok, I guess I need to check this out further. I was
> basing my
> reactions to the appearance of algae with what I read at
> wetwebmedia's faq sheet on algae control -
>
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/PlantedTksSubWebIndex/algcontags.htm
> (Mainly because reading the faq at thekrib -
> http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/Algae/balance.html - tends
> to give me
> a headache. <g>)
> 
> Since algae also seemed to coincide with increased levels
> of
> nitrate, that seemed to validate what these folks were
> saying here -
> http://www.algone.com/phosphates.htm..  I've never tested
> for
> phosphate, so I guess you'd recommend I add that kit?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Dennis
> 
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