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I have been reading and re-reading Diana Walstad's book, "Ecology of the Planted Aquarium", because I've reached the age when low maintenance is my prime requirement for continuing to have an aquarium. While reading the book I became very interested in the sections about algae, primarily one concept: algae require minute quantities of nutrients, including iron, but iron is pretty hard to find in the water. This now has me obsessing about whether we can make a big stride towards avoiding the most obnoxious algae attacks if we make the effort to keep iron out of the water.
I have for many years been using the EI fertilizing method or modified versions of it. Those require that we dose trace element mixes, which contain iron as an important ingredient. From the book, it appears that this is like giving algae a spare key to our "house".
Algae, unlike plants, cannot get to the iron in the substrate, whether it is soil or gravel with substrate fertilizing. So, it seems like if we did all that we can to limit the iron to the substrate, our algae problems would be much easier to manage. Included in that idea is the fact that light can make what iron is in the water more available to algae, if the light is intense in the 500nm or shorter wave lengths. That means light in the blue-green to UV range.
I'm still digesting this concept, and doing more reading, but I'm wondering if many people have tried to use this as an algae control method.
I have for many years been using the EI fertilizing method or modified versions of it. Those require that we dose trace element mixes, which contain iron as an important ingredient. From the book, it appears that this is like giving algae a spare key to our "house".
Algae, unlike plants, cannot get to the iron in the substrate, whether it is soil or gravel with substrate fertilizing. So, it seems like if we did all that we can to limit the iron to the substrate, our algae problems would be much easier to manage. Included in that idea is the fact that light can make what iron is in the water more available to algae, if the light is intense in the 500nm or shorter wave lengths. That means light in the blue-green to UV range.
I'm still digesting this concept, and doing more reading, but I'm wondering if many people have tried to use this as an algae control method.