Hair algae - I'm now at a loss!

[sciencefiction]

I also followed in toms foot steps with my journal but had a fair bit of surface movement and my plants flourished

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Thanks Alastair. That's great to know. I actually read yours also(Chocolate puddle . Your tank was amazing. I totally love it. Did you receive the bigger tank?
Can I ask you if you kept anthurium lilies(I've got flamingo flower today) as I was wondering since it's poisonous to cats, dogs, fish and reptiles, whether it's going to be ok in the aquarium with fish and inverts?
And in regards to the parlour palm, did you manage to grow it in the aquarium successfully, or should I not even try? I actually just potted one in a planter with clay pebbles and a bit of soil, capped, but after reading a bit I am not sure it can do well.

 

[Alastair]

Thanks Alastair. That's great to know. I actually read yours also(Chocolate puddle . Your tank was amazing. I totally love it. Did you receive the bigger tank?
Can I ask you if you kept anthurium lilies(I've got flamingo flower today) as I was wondering since it's poisonous to cats, dogs, fish and reptiles, whether it's going to be ok in the aquarium with fish and inverts?
And in regards to the parlour palm, did you manage to grow it in the aquarium successfully, or should I not even try? I actually just potted one in a planter with clay pebbles and a bit of soil, capped, but after reading a bit I am not sure it can do well.

Must apologise to the original poster for going off topic first lol

But thanks. I loved the tank alot. Miss it but hope new one is on par. The replacement bigger tank is here Sunday morning due to a delay with transport issues.

Yes I kept antherium lilys, so did tom infact it was his originally. It has no harmful effects to any fauna at all, its only if digested and thats the leaf part and or spathes I believe. They grow beautifully as a riparium plant.

The parlour palm didn't like being under the light source so I just moved it to the corner of the tank and didnt plant it just left it rested with its roots free in the water. It spruced up a bit but in the year I had it it grew two leaves very very slowly.

Pothos is a great one to try and trails along the back of the tank beautifully. This is how much its grown in two months of being sat in the storage tub. ... no planter again just free floating roots. Bit messy as its just left untrimmed at the moment

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[sciencefiction]

Apologies for going off topic too.
Thanks Alastair. I'll grab some pothos too next time. I am planning manzanita sticks and oak leaves tank unplanted, but planting the trickle filter with emersed house plants instead with a prefilter on the intake. And I've got an open top planted tank in which I am chancing emersed plants into it already, thanks to Tom and yourself mainly.
I can't wait to see your new journal too. It's going to be great I am certain.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

According to Diana Walstad, the levels of CO2 from decomposition in the soil, if you get the stock/feeding right, is higher than from surface agitation. Hence she stresses out the importance of not having surface movement because you are wasting it. Also, the lower levels of the tank won't be affected as you can have flow around the tank, but not much surface movement, plus most of the CO2 comes from the soil.

I'm a great fan of Diana Walstad, but I think she is wrong here and I also think all tanks are better with regular water changes, even low tech ones. It is difficult to measure dissolved CO2 levels, in fact this is true of any dissolved gas, but even in a situation with an organic sediment producing lots of CO2, it will rapidly be depleted during photosynthesis.

The real problems come when the oxygen production from photosynthesis ceases and the plants start contributing to the bio-load, in this case fish are likely to be affected by high CO2 & low O2 levels. How fish are affected will depend upon Bohr-Root effect, <Root effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia> with some fish, Anabantoids, carp and some catfish etc, totally un-effected, and others (Hypancistrus etc) rapidly suffering respiratory distress and death.

I've seen Big Tom's bucket of mud journal and his tank seems to be following a similar principle, there's little to none surface movement.

Tom can tell you more, but this was a wide shallow tank with low stocking, and in that case you have less problem due to the large surface area to volume ratio.

Can I ask you if you kept anthurium lilies(I've got flamingo flower today) as I was wondering since it's poisonous to cats, dogs, fish and reptiles, whether it's going to be ok in the aquarium with fish and inverts?

All Aroids are poisonous to some degree, including Cryptocoryne and Anubias spp., and I don't expect it to be a problem.

I am planning manzanita sticks and oak leaves tank unplanted, but planting the trickle filter with emersed house plants instead with a prefilter on the intake. And I've got an open top planted tank in which I am chancing emersed plants into it already

Sounds great, I love planted trickle filters. I've used the deBruyn type a lot <http://www.aka.org/UserFiles/File/debruyn_filter.pdf>, and we used to have some huge ones in the lab based on guttering and large diameter piping.

cheers Darrel

cheers Darrel

 

[BigTom]

I certainly ran without a filter for a long time, with minimal surface movement. However as Darrel pointed out that was with a low fish stocking and and very large SA:volume ratio. These days with more fish in the tank I run an Eheim 2324 which provides lots of surface movement.

I couldn't even begin to hazard a guess as to what the balance is of co2 entering the water column from the atmosphere vs coming from the soil, but with a lot of surface area and surface water movement my gut thinks that both o2 and co2 should be pretty stable around whatever their natural dissolved concentrations are.

I'm sure Darrel will correct me if that sounds well off the mark.

 

[sciencefiction]

Thanks Darrel and Tom.
With surface movement sometimes people also have different understanding about it. I've never attempted no surface movement at all as I find it hard to believe that all those oxygen demanding processes, fish and all can cope with none in a very well stocked tank, especially that I've noticed a few issues along the way with some tanks. But personally I've found out that what people consider fine surface movement, to me is little or now surface movement in most cases.

What level of surface movement do you consider this tank has?

 

[BigTom]

Well, slightly more than I have now, anyway. Mine's from a duck-bill pipe rather than a spraybar though so more localised.

'Enough' for any sensible setup, I'd say.

 

[sciencefiction]

Thanks Tom. It's actually not a spraybar, but the filter flow hitting the back glass causes the water to travel forward.
And the tank is on and off sufferer of BBA. But in warmer weather when the temps go up I have to keep that way as I had issues in another tank last summer with lesser surface movement, some sudden deaths when the temps of the tank hit 29-30 C(fish just fell dead in front of my eyes) where I run this tank like a washing machine as it's deep(65cm+) and all fish were perfectly fine, but it isn't helping the plants to be honest as that's the only tank I have algae in. I have good surface movement in other tanks but not quite as much.

Here is a better one I took from today:

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

but with a lot of surface area and surface water movement my gut thinks that both o2 and co2 should be pretty stable around whatever their natural dissolved concentrations are.

I think you are probably on the money, unfortunately we can't really measure any of the parameters without some pretty expensive kit, so we have to use pH, fish behaviour and plant growth as an indicator.

There has been a lot of work in commercial aquaculture on DO/CO2, but CO2 is only really of interest at high levels, so as long as systems out-gas it fairly efficiently you don't need to know the levels. The basic equation is that; when you add oxygen, either directly or indirectly, you also remove CO2.

But in warmer weather when the temps go up I have to keep that way as I had issues in another tank last summer with lesser surface movement, some sudden deaths when the temps of the tank hit 29-30 C(fish just fell dead in front of my eyes) where I run this tank like a washing machine as it's deep(65cm+) and all fish were perfectly fine, but it isn't helping the plants to be honest as that's the only tank I have algae in. I have good surface movement in other tanks but not quite as much.

This is why a lot of fish death, related to low dissolved oxygen levels, happen at night during thundery weather in the summer, it really is the "perfect storm". Warm water can hold less dissolved oxygen (same for all gases), and low atmospheric pressure also reduces the solubility of gases, if you don't increase the active gas exchange surface then you have the "double whammy" and dead fish.

And the tank is on and off sufferer of BBA

I think probably all low tech tanks get a bit of BBA, I have Red Ramshorn snails that browse it from hard surfaces, but I get it growing on filter sponges etc.

Some aquaculture bits
Because most (all?) commercial fish species don't require soft water, water management is easier in carbonate buffered systems, here are a couple of papers with an introduction to aquaculture: <https://srac.tamu.edu/index.cfm/event/getFactSheet/whichfactsheet/112/> & <https://srac.tamu.edu/index.cfm/event/getFactSheet/whichfactsheet/205/>.

There is a lot of work on more efficient aquaculture systems. This is from Brune, D. et al. (2003) Aquacultural Engineering 28:1, pp. 65:86 "Intensification of pond aquaculture and high rate photosynthetic systems". I'm not sure whether there is open access (I'm at work), but it is a very interesting paper, and I can email a pdf: <ScienceDirect.com - Aquacultural Engineering - Intensification of pond aquaculture and high rate photosynthetic systems>. More open access stuff here: <BruneDavidAlgalSystem>

The paper looks at using partitioning of fish and plants ("green water" algae) and using solar driven paddle wheels for aeration

low energy paddlewheel mixed ponds .... are capable of sustained algal yields of 10–12 g C/m2-day. This three to fourfold increase in algal photosynthesis provides the potential for a similar increase in the rate of pond water detoxification (ammonia removal) while simultaneously providing a solar driven oxygen production system. By superimposing a water velocity field upon the pond it becomes possible to utilize velocity and hydraulic detention time as a controlling strategy in reconfiguring the aquatic ecosystems of pond aquaculture into a series of engineered aquatic processes. High rate photosynthetic systems offer the greatest potential for intensification of pond aquaculture

cheers Darrel

 

[sciencefiction]

Thanks for that info Darrel. I'll have a read through it.

I think probably all low tech tanks get a bit of BBA, I have Red Ramshorn snails that browse it from hard surfaces, but I get it growing on filter sponges etc.

The tank with the high surface movement that gets algae issues is actually dosed with liquid carbon daily and ferts. My other low tech tanks never had a problem with any algae so I am not certain whether it's the high surface movement exhausting CO2, or something else causing it in this tank, it's just hard to figure how to get a balance but I am experimenting and the algae is minimal, although it's still there. I managed to beat the GSA, now just very little BBA appearance left to figure. I'd love to put some ramshorns and nerite snails in it but the clown loaches will get to them pretty fast.