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Thanks for that Zoom. I suppose I can live with the color becuase it seems to make my neons brighten up more. I have noticed some algae on some of the plants and the wood, is this normal for this sort of tank?

 

Algae has always been a hot topic on this forum.

What is not commonly known about algae is that there is many different types. And each type thrives under different conditions. So if you have too much nitrates with ideal light, you may get one type of algae. If you have low light, high nitrates, you will get another type of algae. You can go even further into this and break it down to nutrition. I currently have an imbalance of calcium to magnesium ratio in my tank, (which is due to our tap water from Rand Water), and hence I am constantly battling with staghorn algae.

I would say that 99% of aquarists will immedietly start cleaning algae the moment they see it, not realizing the implications of what they are doing. Let's say you have algae growing on the rocks, and some of the leaves of your tank. You grab a small brush, and whilst doing a water change, you scrub that algae off the rock. All you are doing is making the algae water-borne, and it will spread more rampant. Ideally you'd want to take the rock out and scrub it out of the tank. If it's on a leaf, you would cut the leaf off and disgard it. Bit then you may just end up with no plants in your tank.

What you ideally should be doing is a little bit of research... find out what is the route cause of the algae... and then try and remedy it. So in my case, I would need to add magnesium to my water. Other cases you may need to up the lights, lower the lights, increase the photo-period, decrease the photo-period, add some kind of nutrient, add CO2... the options are endless, and basically there is no 2 tanks that are the same.

The people running Tom Barr's Estimative Index of fertilizing actually USES the presence of algae to determine how to add their fertilizers. The moment they see a type of algae, they know what the cause is, and through their methods of fertilizing, they can remedy the problem. Yes it can be a hit and miss situation... but I'm just explaining how Algae can be used to your advantage.

I personally do not mind algae in my tank. It is not overrunning the tank. The staghorn grows fairly slowly, and by the time it is getting out of hand, I am pretty much ready to do a very heavy prune on my tank in any case... so I remove it manually that way. Green Spot Algae on the glass is everyone's worst enemy because it limit's your view of the tank. It is however also the easiest to remove. If you are getting GSA the day before your water change, (i.e every 7th day), you are actually considered to be in a good position with regards to your fertilizing strategy. It's a good indicator.

I also have a little bit of algae on my rocks, wood, and on the roots of my anubias... to me, this just makes the tank look more natural to me. So I don't stress about it too much.

Also bear in mind that algae creates a good food option for certain fish that eat plant food. I only feed my fish once a day, in the evenings. But I have seen my guppies grazing on the algae at times. Again, not all fish will eat all algae. Everyone says get Chinese Algae Eaters, Siamese algae eaters or Otto's.... whilst this may help, it will only help with certain algae. SAE are the better option of the 3 because they will eat a wider variety of algae, but then you know how murphy works, you will have that one algae that isn't being eaten!

 

A little update. I went to visit work yesterday and asked if I could get some vallis out of the outside pond-Yes that's right, outside pond. Literaly a carpet of it. So I got a few handfuls and I noticed the muck it was growing in. Quite amazing. I will post pic's of it another time.
Anyway, after rinsing it (What is the correct way of preparing it for a tank, a step by step guide please?) and picking off the odd leach and snail I trimmed it and put it into my tank. So this is what it ended up looking like last night.
Sorry about bad photos but my dads camera is a 1,3mp.
Left hand side.


Middle shot-sorry about glare.

Thanks
M

 

So I got up this morning to go to school. Got ready and fed my fish when I noticed some eggs on my powerhead nozzle. Unfourtunatly I didn't have enough time to do anything and when I got back they looked as though they had been eaten. I think it was the cories that did it.
I watched some youtube vids about them spawing.
A quick question: How do you induce spawing? I have been fiddling to get the temp right but my thermometers don't seem to read the same, I have 4 in the tank at the same place but they all read different temps. What is the best type of thermometer to use?

 

Corys will breed every second week . . .so just don't worry about inducing them . .

 

Usually a water change with slightly colder water than the tank water temp will induce the cory's to spawn