SAEs and hair algae
- Thread starter wesleydnunder
- Start date
Small/Young SAEs are good grazers IME, but the adults are worthless- all they want is fish food. I traded them off but had no problems before that. They were in with rainbows, so not much likelihood of their bugging those speed demons anyway. The few I have kept since were traded by the time they doubled from purchase size.
My best suggestion would be to get the CO2 concentration up a good bit. At 4WPG, you need to be nearly a full pH log down at least. If the tank at is at pH 7.0 de-gassed, you should be at or near pH 6.0.
kcooley - IME, "starving" the tank/plants is an invitation to algae, and phosphate is a macronutrient for plants - its absence or very low titer is an invitation to algae.
Edit: Thanks for presenting so much info - life would be sooo much easier if that were routine on the boards.
My best suggestion would be to get the CO2 concentration up a good bit. At 4WPG, you need to be nearly a full pH log down at least. If the tank at is at pH 7.0 de-gassed, you should be at or near pH 6.0.
kcooley - IME, "starving" the tank/plants is an invitation to algae, and phosphate is a macronutrient for plants - its absence or very low titer is an invitation to algae.
Edit: Thanks for presenting so much info - life would be sooo much easier if that were routine on the boards.
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Thanks for the advice, RTR. After 12 hours overnight my tank should be pretty much de-gassed, right? With a 7.0 ph and KH of 9 Chuck's chart says I'm at about 24 ppm of co2. So I've got some other buffers besides carbonate slewing my KH on the chart? I'll start easing the co2 up this weekend when I can monitor the fish closely. Thanks again, Robert.
Mark
Mark
Yup, a lot of folks are giving up on the charts using KH - if your water is "simple", the charts work great. But there are too many folks with highly anomalous readings that just do not track at all, and folks with by-the-chart astronomic "CO2" levels and even delicate fish are fine. Within normal tank pH ranges, a log drop from the de-gassed reading will be close to 30ppm CO2 and should be good for most high light tank opertation. But do monitor the fish' respiration and activity as you increase the CO2, just in case.
