I think you are right about neglecting to see the beauty of algae. It became an obsession of mine after I started looking under a microscope that my brother used for coins. The first pictures weren't even that close up. Getting that microscope as a present was awesome. Best gift ever.
My belief is that there is a lot of algae problems are not algae but rather bacteria. For instance, a friend of mine was having constant brown stringy algae issues. People on the other forum kept saying it was Rhizoclonium and it was low nutrients. So he added nutrients and the algae flourished. People told him it was because he needed to up the co2. He did. It got worse. Lower your lighting levels. Check, worse. Finally he sent it to me. It was iron bacteria, Gallionella ferruginea. As an experiment, he agreed to treat the tank with low levels of antibiotics. Wiped it out nearly overnight. It is common in this side of the country and it feeds off iron, which we have plenty. Adding more micro-nutrients just made it happier. Once he got it eliminated, it was easier to stay "algae" free. The one thing that is interesting is the fact this stuff is in our water supply and you are just adding it in every time you change the water. So if you have high iron in your water, you don't necessarily want to add an iron supplement as you may get an outbreak of this so called algae.
My issue with people giving blanket statements usually don't take the time to investigate what is going on with the individual's tank. So if you receive the following advice and you still aren't getting results, look elsewhere.:
I don't have algae.
Lower your lights.
Up your co2
Up your nutrients.
Anyway, I'll be posting up more pictures and comments in the future weeks. I am in the middle of sewing a large project so I'll be infrequent for a while.
Statistics: Posted by sewingalot — Sat Jan 19, 2013 11:22 am
]]>
]]>
]]>
Desmids are my favorite algae to look at. They are beautiful and very pleasing to read about in my opinion. Here is a great link: http://www.desmids.com/
This is a neat slide. The banana shaped green algae is Closterium. It is eating iron bacteria.
Cosmarium, another desmid
This is iron bacteria. I will post details about it later, but right off a lot of people mistake this as algae, it often looks like stringy or cotton candy brown algae.
Statistics: Posted by sewingalot — Thu Jan 10, 2013 3:31 pm
]]>
Statistics: Posted by Darkcobra — Mon Jan 07, 2013 9:36 pm
]]>
]]>
]]>
]]>
]]>
]]>
]]>
]]>
Spirogyra Algae, commonly referred to as filament or hair algae
Diatom next to a hair algae yet to be identified
Desmid in the center
This is a form of Blue Green Algae that is really a Cyanobacteria and not algae at all. It grows in long strands and is often confused as hair algae
Other types of cyanobacteria
Statistics: Posted by sewingalot — Tue Jan 01, 2013 9:21 pm
]]>