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Post by Rick Hillier on Feb 24, 2009 7:49:08 GMT -5
As the title says, I have a tank full of U. gibba that keeps getting clogged with this awful algae to a point where the plant looks like it will get smothered. I've redone the tank several times, swishing out the utric as best as I can to remove the loose stuff, but it keeps coming back fairly quickly and is very unsightly.
Is there a way to get rid of this algae (maybe something that might eat it, but not the utric)?
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Post by tom on Feb 24, 2009 8:11:42 GMT -5
i was unlucky with the same fight in the past. Small snail, small water critters, i've tried a lot of things, with little success. The most successful method was to put clean strands of U. gibba into a clean pot in which i pour distilled water boiled with a little peat, put a cover and leave it that way... until i got bored... You might want to find back Chris Fieger's article ( www.islandnet.com/~tmalcolm/aquacult.html) which was hosted on Tim Malcolm's website ( www.islandnet.com/~tmalcolm/) (both 2 great canadian CPers 'from the past'): i think there was some tips in algae fight...
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Post by Rick Hillier on Feb 24, 2009 8:58:56 GMT -5
Right now, all I do is curse at it... so far I've invented three new swear words. I don't know how to spell them yet.....
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Post by tom on Feb 24, 2009 11:02:45 GMT -5
never thought of that one! Let me know if it works well, so i could find a french translation
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Post by lloyd on Feb 24, 2009 12:16:14 GMT -5
I find U. gibba to be a losing battle. I think it needs a real pond with a more complex ecosystem.
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Post by tom on Feb 24, 2009 12:25:50 GMT -5
I ended throwing it out to garbage. But i think that fish keepers which are feeding live food could keep them in their Daphnia raising tank... critters being used as a algae control AND food for the plant...
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Post by brian on Feb 24, 2009 15:53:20 GMT -5
Do they send leaves above the water surface or are the leaves submerged? Just wondering, since I eliminate algae from my fish pond by adding duckweed, it covers the surface to keep light from the algae but the water lilies put their leaves to the surface. What about snails?
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Post by Rick Hillier on Mar 9, 2009 6:07:37 GMT -5
I threw a small clump of the U. gibba and algae mix into one of my dart frog tadpole tanks and forgot about it. When I did a water change on it about a week later, I noticed that the bladderwort plant was clean - no algae.
I don't know if the tadpoles ate the algae or whether the tannins in the water were not condusive to the algae. Suffice it to say that I'll be putting more of this wonderful mix into the tadpole tanks this week.
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Post by hackerberry on Mar 9, 2009 7:12:25 GMT -5
Nice Rick! Good to hear that you discovered something to get rid of the algae. Keep us updated!
hb
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Post by carnivoure12 on Mar 9, 2009 14:50:40 GMT -5
Hmm I've heard about the methos to add various aquatic plants, water lilies, ummm aquarium plants. You can also use an air stome, algae grew A LOT slower with this method in the tanks I used to have, i'm think you can use a filter aswell?
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Post by tom on Mar 19, 2009 8:03:04 GMT -5
could you give your 'water condition' of your tadpole tank?
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Post by lloyd on Mar 19, 2009 9:07:00 GMT -5
I find water plants really mysterious. I had some gibba that Tom gave me in my 10 gal. aquarium (rain-water) with CFL's, tons of plants, corner fillter (activated charcoal, peat pellets and cotton) with an extra airstone and some neons and a little pleco. It went crazy for a year taking over the top of the aquarium. Then it went "dormant" over the winter and just hung on as a little glop after that. It still sits in a little jar looking pathetic with lots of algae.
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Post by Rick Hillier on Mar 19, 2009 9:12:52 GMT -5
The water in my tadpole tanks are just RO water with Kent's Blackwater Expert (I think that's the name of it) mixed in to give the water a brownish look while acidifying the water a bit and adding tannins.
The tadpoles are still picking away at the algae and I'm seeing a bit more of the utric. Before trying what I did above, I had lost alot of it due to it getting choked out by the algae, so hopefully I'll have a recovery down the road.
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