So, why does New School = no algae?

Thinking loud....

As we know, algae, cyano and else are really primitive life forms. The forms that we encounter today are the one that evolve and survive the multiple great extinctions that appears in the timeline of our planet. They are the toughest buggers of all time, a success of evolution.

Some theory bring the possibility that cyanobacteria was so abundant in the early ocean that they are a major player in the apparition of a non-toxic breathable atmosphere that give us our chance.

Life have tendency to fill empty space and the only purpose of our greenish champions is to multiply and conquer.

Well, lucky we are, other forms of life start to compete with our friends, always finding new way to outcompete them, smarter and complex new designs, giving us today our diverse type of plants that we try to constrain to a big jug of water.

Those plants are another success of evolution, we are not, and for that reason we gather here to pierce the secrets of life.

By the law of nature if the higher forms of plant thrive they will take the place, but not eliminate their simple ancestors, algaes.

I was a partisan of PMDD but those new approach ring a bell.

Always have just the right amount of nutrient without overdosing, good levels of light, water movements ( good for Prandtl boundary), oxygen and all. Bring every week lot of new well prepared water with the right basic parameter.

Just thinking... Somebody try to ad peroxide to oxygenate RO water?

Hi

Being new here, glad to have found this thread.
Hope to find an answer too. Much liked the comic of the guy climbing up the mountain to find the Guru so to seek the ultimate question in life that "why plants grow well will have no algae ?" :hail:

What if every theory every hypothesis is right ?

We were told to limit P, it works.

We were told to limit Fe, it works.

We were told to only feed from the substrate, it works

We were told to water column feeding, it works

We were told to portion the right amount each week, it works

We were told to limit NH4 and feed everything inorganic to the plants' content, it works.

May be the answer could simply be "because plants grow well hence no algae." (Hey, I think that was what Tom try to tell us all this while ! What's wrong with you people ? Why can't we take that as THE answer - period. : )


Cheers !
dc

Unfortunately, Tom has decided to remove all his posts from this thread so we can't consider his opinions on this topic.

I, for one, find this topic interesting and feel that there isn't a true answer yet. I do hope that someone takes the time to study this topic in detail and post their experiment/findings so that we can get to a true answer.

For the time being, we will continue to treat this as a black box. We fertilize in a certain way and we end up with little or no algae. We are not sure exactly why no algae is the result.

The focus seems to be on NH4 as triggering algae spores to germinate. In my experience, I have seen algae blooms when something happens that interferes with my plants' steady growth. So, for example, one time I ran out of CO2 and didn't notice for a few days. This impacted my plants' growth. As a result, uptake of NH4 dropped presumably thereby increasing its presence in the water column. If the hypothesis is correct, this caused the algae spores to germinate. Hence, my algae bloom.

This is all conjecture, of course.

Gut Feeling

I feel we are all trying to achieve a common goal here - having a thriving, beautiful planted aquarium with little to no algae growth. The problem here is that each one of us may be using some of the same equipment and fertilization methods, or lighting intensity / duration, but there are several other factors like water chemistry and source, atmospheric differences, what we have on our arms when we stick them in the tank - etc, that can play a small (or large part) in how our gardens grow. These variables lead to a somewhat chaotic situation when trying to break down how or why our plants are growing or not growing. I am not a Chaotician nor am I a professional at any of this, but I do know we are trying to reproduce nature to some extent, and while at some fleeting moments we may feel as though we have achieved this glorious goal - we have in fact only managed to satisfy certain requirements at a certain moment that satisfy what our image of nature really is - but man is it fun! IMO