Algae production methods

[Gary Herring]

Something which may be of interest to keepers of Hillstreams, or indeed any algae eating fish.

This is my method for speed growing green algae on rocks in a dedicated tank:

I use a small shallow glass tank positioned near a window in direct sunlight, with 2 x 15w bulbs and reflectors fitted in the hood (obviously the stronger the light the better). The flourescant tubes are of the optimum frequancy range for chlorophyll photosynthasis, and are left on 24hrs a day. Rocks and paddle stones of various sizes are placed in the bottom, and i use old tank water left over as a result of my weekly 15% water change in my river tank. To the water i add Nutrafin 'plant-gro' at the rate of 1ml per 1 litre of water. Any plant food could be used, but i have found this to be the best as it contains nitrogen as well as iron, manganese and zinc. Also added to the water is Waterlife 'Bio-mature' which is another source of nitrogen in the form of ammonium(algae's prefurred source), but only 2 or 3 drops per 10 litres of water, and finally waterlife 'vitazin' a multi vitamin suppliment(vitamins encourage algae growth, B12 especially), at about 7 or 8 drops per 10 litres. 50% of the water is changed for new (enriched with nutriants as above) twice a week to keep nutriant levels topped up. I also use a small airstone in the tank, which boosts growth even more, presumably by increasing levels of dissolved CO2 in the water.

I have great results using this method, and it produces enough lush green algae to feed my 9 hillstream loaches with it every other day, which they really appreciate!
I hope somebody finds this useful, and if anyone has any ideas to improve this method even further, or any other ideas for speed-growing algae, please let me know.

Gary

[Jim Powers]

Very interesting. I have tried doing this using very similar methods to what you are using. I am not, however, familiar with many of the products you mentioned. The biggest problem I have had is that the algae produced is very soft and will often slide off the rocks when they are moved. Even if that doesn't happen, the hillstreams will clean the algae from the rocks or break it loose, in a matter of minutes. Do you have this problem with your "algea rocks"? I want to find a way to grow algae that will stay attached to the rocks longer and thus feed the fish longer.

[Gary Herring]

Hi Jim,

Waterlife are a uk company i think, but you could probably mail-order their products through their website, or if this is not viable, im sure simular products could be found on your side of the pond.
The algae i produce is also fairly soft, but it does stay firmly attached to the rocks untill eaten, so i hav'nt really experianced the problems you describe. One suggestion is when you first set up an algae 'nursary', start it off by adding a rock that has a desirable species of algae already growing on it, perhaps from another one of your tanks, or somebody elses. This should then 'seed' the the new algae tank with the desirable type algae, leading to production of this type alone. Or you could try using pieces of bogwood instead of rocks, as i find algae sticks to this better.
Hope this helps.

[Gary Herring]

Also worth remembering that its the 'aufwuchs' contained in the algae that is the main part of the 'meal', and these will occur in any algae, no matter how soft.

[Jim Powers]

I am going to attempt this again, but see if I can get the alage to adhere to the rocks better. The hillstreams like what I have grown before, but I want something that will feed them for more than five minutes. I also have an ever increasing army of shrimp in one the tanks that would swarm all over the soft algae in minutes. I was scraping algae off the tank light the other day and a chunk of the algae fell into the tank and got tossed around by the current. I forgot about it until later I noticed this HUGE mass of shrimp. They had found it and made short work of the algae chunk.
Thanks for the info.

[Gary Herring]

No problem. You, Martin, Emma, et al have taught me pretty much everything i know about Hillstream loaches so its nice to be able to share a little bit of knowledge picked up from my own experiance.
Good luck with the algae, let us know how it goes.