I can see why in a tank of lower light levels and lower nutrients that algae is held back.
I struggle to understand what it is in an EI set up that is holding the algae back. I can`t imagine all the plants being united in a battle against algae using allelopathy, because they would eventually use this method to turn against themselves.
There must be a common denominator, and pearling plants releasing O2 could be it.
NH4 induces many species of algae, and if it's there, plants rapidly suck it up........if the plants have enough food, they exclude the algae.
It makes a good indicator that someone else is there and growing well.
It explains why adding progressively more and more fish to a planted tank instead of KNO3/KH2PO4 etc causes algae when you add CO2/higher light.
Diana cannot rectify the issues in a non CO2 and CO2 planted tanks nor makes an attempt to do so, this hypothesis does.
Why are there elephants if there are mice?
Should the mice out compete the elephants?
The elephants need much more food to do well
Both are herbivores, one is tiny, the other huge, one reproduces very rapidly, the other does not.
Like plants and algae, they are in quite differing time scales, reproductive cyclings/types, size, nutrient demands, basically they are not in the same ecological niche at all.
But......folks like to think they are for some odd reason.
They have plants, then get algae, they think something is feeding the algae, that's butt backwards think, the question should be: what do the plants need to grow optimally?
When you focus on the plants needs, algae is not much of an issue.
Problem is, folks worry too much about algae and not enough about plants.
I'm not the only one that's blasted allelopathy out of the water, Dr Ole Petersen has a great article, and along different lines on Tropica's web site.
You can search his name and allelopathy and find a pdf file for it.
Dr Kane in UF, a good personal friend of mine and where I went to grad school also has done a lot of work on this subject as well as Dr Bowes, Allison Fox and Bill haller there at UF as well as Hoyer, Bachmann among many others. They think what I do, but maybe on the off chance, we are all wrong?
And here is the death of the entire theory in my personal opinion:
Observation, out of the 300 species of commonly kept aquatic plants, why do we see the same algae supression intensity in all tanks, with wide variation in plant species and biomass?
Put another way:
what are the odds that all 300 species(many of which are not aquatic in natural systems, or not most of the year) produce ther same chemicals and produce the same intensity of repression on all algae species?
Think about that for a moment.
It cannot be one allelopathic chemical silver bullet as many enjoy claiming.
Endogenous cellular chemicals are not the same as ground up plant juice added at high concentrations to algae samples in test wells.
If you assume that allelopathic chemical are causing the algae to be repressed, a very simple test will tell: add fresh activated carbon tio the filter, and/or do a giant water change each day.
AC is used as a standard method for removal in the control of allelopathic chemical studies in research.
If you assume that Allelopathic chemicals supress algae, then removing them will induce algae, not one person has ever shown that to be true or even correlated in any way.
Actually, quite the opposite, better plant growth, less algae.
Take a look at Ole's comments.
George, have you any info on the value of ADA Phyton Git?
Makes you feel better?
Helps ADA's sales?
It does not supress algae due to allelopathic chemicals in our tanks.
That much I do know.
Regards,
Tom Barr
