my java moss island is trying to escape the aquarium ?

[NoodleCats]

That's some glorious hair algae lol

That's an interesting take on the lighting thing. Never thought of it that way.

So, the few hours on, hour or two off and then few hours on again, how does that affect plants, you think?

I like to watch for when my plants close up though, when they close up the top leaves I know they've had enough and I adjust my schedules for that--usually happens between 6-8 hours of time.

 

[fishorama]

dougall, your hair algae reminds me of my abortive "crypt grow out tank" (remember that?). I managed to kill the hair algae fairly easily but it's still a now black tangled mess...Yes, I'm in tear down mode too but slowly...

 

[dougall]

...it's not hair nor thread algae, pretty sure it's cladoraphora or however it is spelled.


But.. photoperiod-wise it normally maybe 7 or 8 hours for a plant to start to photosynthesize properly.. turning off the light before that will stop it from happening.. if the plants aren't able to use the nutrients you can be pretty sure the algae can.

As always, your tanks, your prerogative. Just not gonna be something I would do.. I would rather reduce the intensity of the light and stay closer to a 12 hour photoperiod.

 

[dougall]

And,umm, duckweed and moss fronds

 

[Wyomingite]

The one thing that irks me when talking about a planted aquarium...

Always when algae starts to grow, one of the first solutions is to reduce the photoperiod as having the lights on too long will mean there is too much light and that is what is causing the all the algae.

Or have a 'siesta'

While either method may be a part of a solution, I won't condone it simply because it will force plants to grow like days are shorter, i.e. winter growth.

Obviously someone else's aquarium.. but whatevs.

I am pretty sure virtually nobody gets the full potential from their plants. Because full potential would require just far too many ecosystems we are unlikely to provide them all.

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound critical. I was just making an observation that sometimes it seems when I quit tinkering and just let things be everything turns out the best.

As for your algae, I had a platy tank with a huge mass of floating hornwort that had caught on a piece of driftwood near the surface. It just grew in the current and looked really cool. I did my water changes and regular maintenance, got up on a step stool and looked in the top one day, intending to thin out the hornwort a bit. There was a huge mass of algae like what you have in there like a core, and all the fry were nibbling on it and eating all the seed shrimp that lived in it . When I tried to remove the algae the hornwort started to fall apart and so I ended up leaving it. The tank was at eye level and you couldn't even see the algae, so once everything started growing good again I'd just harvest a bit of the algae now and then and feed it to my mbuna. There wasn't any other algae growth to speak of and the only plants below the hornwort were crypts, java moss and java fern, which did well, so I just let everything grow as was. That is where I was going with my observation.

WYite

 

[dougall]

??

No sir, I am all in favor of letting nature take its course (at least as much as possible in a glass box of water)

Just mentioning folks who do what they think is best, or grow how they think is best kind of triggered me.

Just like a lot of the internet fads surrounding planted aquariums.