# ramblings on algae



## Auban (Aug 8, 2010)

i wrote this thread a while back on another forum and figured the good people of aquarium forum might like to read it too. finally got around to posting it.

from time to time i get into a strange manic mood, in which i utterly fail in every attempt to quiet my mind. during these moments, i have developed some of my most successful ideas, from mutating fish, to ecological applications, and even inventions and innovative ways to blur the lines between electronics theory and its applicability to biology, even aquarium husbandry. right now, i am in such a mood. its one of the most irritating things, i want to sleep so that i am not completely dead tired tomorrow when i go back to class, but i cannot. i have tried many times, and have learned that i will simply lay there for hours and hours, ever getting distracted from sleep by a random visualization that forces itself upon my conscious. i also love it. its the only time i can write one language with one hand, take notes in another language on another train of thought with the other hand while listening to music and reading an unrelated topic. the feeling of having so much go on is addictive. exhausting, but extremely addictive. for several hours straight i feel like i can do anything, and it is when i think the fastest.

one day, in such a mood, i walked into my in-laws place and saw their ten gallon tank over run by a tough hair algae. when i saw it, i saw possibilities. my thought process went something like this: that looks like an ugly, unkempt moss. i wonder what it could do if it were actually cultured. so i collected some and brought it home with me. i put it first in my elassoma gilberti tank, and just let it grow. it grew pretty quick, but in no way was it aesthetically pleasing. it looked like crap. later on, in another such mood, i saw what i needed to do. 

i imagined a situation in which the algae grew nice and dense, similar to an attractive moss, and then i recreated the scenario in my head in order to have a model to grow my algae in. what i saw in my head was the algae that grows on rocks in faster flowing streams, which sometimes forms a bit of curly hair type algae on it, which grows in very dense thin mats. what made this algae any different from the algae in a lake? well, for one it had a very high amount of flow. two, it received full exposure to sunlight every day, since the particular stream i remembered seeing the attractive algae in had virtually no tannins in it and was quite shallow. three, it was constantly being grazed by critters that were able to scrape the algae off, or it was repeatedly exposed to dryness. this caused it to grow back thicker every time, since damaging a thread of algae often causes it to grow back in two or more threads. 

so, these were the conditions that i needed to replicate to produce an attractive algae inside my tanks. the first thing i tried was attaching some of it to a little stone and putting it in front of a filter output. that didn't work so well, even with the high flow and regular trimming, it still produced very unattractive loose strands that would grow very long, but wouldnt form much in the way of a tight clump. fast forward a couple weeks. i end up in the mood again and decide to put an airstone on the E. gilberti tank. it felt like a gunshot went off in my head with how fast visualizations flashed along. in the time it took the first bubble to catch a few threads and start lifting it to the surface, my mind raced through a whole process:
grow the algae out along the surface, leave the lights on 24/7 to promote strands growing in one direction(up). add another type of algae, which can grow partially immersed, and encourage it to grow on the surface of the loose mat. after it is established, flip the mat over and let it grow until the secondary algae type grows back through the whole thickness of the algae mat and is protruding out the surface again. after this, increase flow to the bottom of the algae mat and turn the lights off. this will cause the algae near the top to die back just a little bit while keeping the bottom part alive. then, do the same thing on the other side. why? because the long thin strands of algae are faster growing and store less sugars than the slower growing, more dense type of algae. in other words, it would die faster than the type of algae i actually wanted to grow into a pad. after this, flip it back over and continue doing so until the majority algae is the thick stuff. by that point, i will have a thick pad of algae that i can cut into manageable strips.

so, that's what went through my head as i looked into the tank and watched the bubbles that day. the images that flashed though my head like southern lighting laid out the whole process. i knew how to make hair algae manageable, something that would allow me to make it look good. well, here are some pics of the result. showing some examples of what i have done with it so far. it is also amazing for fry, but more on that later.

showing how the algae looks when it is first grown into a floating mat:










a thin piece, showing the layers it develops after it is flipped over a few times and cut into a thin strip:









showing a piece that i cut and cleaned up a bit.










the next few images are showing a few things i did with the algae. i attached them to pieces of wood with black thread.























































recent:









it acts a lot like a fast growing moss, especially if you provide it with a lot of flow. in fact, if you blast water on it and trim it often, it will grow much like a marimo ball.


ok, on to the way i use algae for fish....

so, after finding out how to grow the algae, it occurred to me that algae produces a LOT of oxygen. when looking into a stagnant tank that i had placed some of the floating mat of algae, i saw that it quickly began to pearl. it was pearling without any CO2, and continued to do so until it floated to the surface. this got me thinking. what if i applied current to it, and bathed it in 24/7 bright light? it would end up with a LOT of oxygen. 

as it turns out, algae is incredibly efficient at producing oxygen. if you stop and think about it, it makes sense that hair algae would be far more efficient at producing oxygen than plants. every single cell in a strand of algae will continuously grow. plants dont. generally speaking, once a leaf is formed, it no longer grows, and is only there to support the overall organism. this means that a plant can survive harder times than algae can, since it does not need a constant supply of nitrogen to survive. it can survive long periods of relatively infertile times because it can store its resources and continue to grow later on. algae on the other hand, cannot. the best it can do is form some spores that are able to rest in a dormant state and begin growing when conditions are more favorable. when conditions are good, it will grow incessantly, since it cannot store much in its cells. any and all nutrients available will be used as fast as the algae can use it.

now, on to surface area. a clump of hair algae has a lot of it. we already addressed the way algae grows in a constant vegetative state when it can. when you think about it, that means that one ounce of hair algae will end up pulling out much more ammonia and produce much more oxygen than one ounce of plant will. it comes down to how fast the algae can double its mass. a plant may produce a few more leaves in a week, but hair algae given everything it needs will completely double or maybe even triple its mass. and of course, it will continue to double its mass as long as it is not limited by nutrients. now, here is the interesting fact: algae can survive with very little in the way of additional nutrients as long as it has access to light. its capable of recycling some of the nutrients it has in order to stay alive, just as long as it can carry out photosynthesis. during dark times, if it the water is completely devoid of nutrients, it is unable to do this. cells will begin to produce spores, which dont grow. with light, they just continue producing oxygen, slowly accumulating nutrients until the cell can divide.

providing the algae with high flow does several things. first, it ensures a constant exchange of dissolved gasses around the individual cells. the algae becomes more dense because it can. without high flow, it quickly uses up all the available carbon dioxide, supersaturates the water around its cells with oxygen. it will continue to live with all that oxygen present, but without new water, it has only the resources in its cells an in the interstitial space between its cells and the cells of adjacent strands. providing it with high flow ensures that it will have plenty of resources available to continue doing what it does best: turning carbon dioxide into oxygen and converting available phosphorus and nitrogen into more cells.

in a tank with fish, this means that the water will have the highest possible levels of oxygen, and the lowest possible levels of ammonia and every nutrient that algae needs. the benefit goes beyond this though. every surface under water has a bio-film on it. these bio-films are just a bunch of tiny living things, which sometimes produce a matrix of protein and sugar, which protects them and produces a better environment for them to live in. with so much surface area, a dense clump of algae has a LOT of it. there is a HUGE variety of living things that are able to eat these bio-films. infusoria living on the surface of decomposing leaves and such is an example. with all the oxygen that algae produces, and all the surface area, a dense clump of algae can sustain a LOT of these tiny critters. 

all this adds up to a tank that is able to produce the best possible environment for fry to live in. with a huge variety of living things available, fry are able to have access to an appropriate food animal at all times, regardless of their size, up until they are large enough to eat something larger, like grindal worms. the fish is too small to eat newly hatched brine shrimp? no problem! the algae is absolutely crawling in ciliates that it can eat. when it gets a little bigger, it can start eating the rotifers that are also present in such large quantities. after its grown up a little bit, it can start eating the great number of ostracods and copepods that have been growing unrestricted in the algae. later on, if they are present, dero worms and grammarious will be taken up. at that point you can start feeding them grindal worms.

actually, at that point you can feed them anything you want. the algae will have reach a point where it is being limited by nutrients, and anything that isnt eaten by the fish will be quickly converted to algae, just as soon as it starts to break down and release ammonia. with so much algae ready to suck up the ammonia, you will probably never be able to get a reading. this makes it VERY hard to overfeed. 

using these methods, i have been able to raise this many bluefin killifish in a five gallon tank, up until they are all at least an inch long.









there are somwhere around 50 in there. they are now around 2 inches, are still in the same five gallon tank, which has no filter on it, and i still cant get an ammonia reading. they get about a teaspoon of grindal worms a day, which dont die until they are eaten. there is enough oxygen present to keep the grindal worms alive until they are eaten. the algae is pretty incredible stuff. i currently have a couple hundred blue fin killifish that i need to get rid of... and they are all crammed in about 20 gallons of water. please, dont start telling me i am cruel for doing so. i want to know the limits of the algaes abilities, and therefore must push these tanks to the absolute limit. i know its not a good idea to keep fifty or a hundred inches of fish in five gallons of water. i also would not have thought it possible a couple years ago...
(NOTE: i no longer have these bluefin killifish in the five gallon. i ended up selling most of them, and moved the rest to a 55g tank. the five gallons now house elassoma gilberti)


anyway, i have been able to raise about 20 fish to about an inch long without feeding them at all, as long as i can keep the flow high enough in the tank and keep the lights on 24/7. the affect produces large clumps of algae that are so dense that the fish cannot graze all of it, so there area "reserves" that keep the food items from going extinct. this has allowed me to inoculate the algae with black worms and not feed the tank at all. at a certain point though, i have too feed the tank something. other wise, the fish get too big, eat too much, and start to starve. when i do feed them, the algae starts to grow more and so do the fish. 


a power outage can absolutely destroy the affect that the algae produces. in such a case, flow stops, light is no longer produced, and the algae starts use up the available oxygen at a phenomenal rate. this will quickly kill everything in a tank and tank and turn it into a nasty smelling soup. in such case, the tanks can be saved with a relatively simple solution. remove the algae.

the algae is able to survive outside the water as long as it is kept moist. its kinda like a plant in that sense. in order to keep a tank alive with a lot of fish though, you would need a battery powered air stone. usually, blackouts dont last very long, so removing the algae, setting it aside somewhere it can stay moist and still be exposed to air, and adding an airstone can keep a tank alive until the power comes back on. once it does, just drop the algae back into the tank and your good to go. i have weathered a few blackouts this way. the one tank i decided to let go(experiment) turned into soup.

now, onto blue LEDs...
there are grow panels available that use very little electricity, but produce nothing but blue light that is supposed to be usable for plants for photosynthesis. i have tested several of them, and while they do work, the plants dont produce a very appealing look. algae, on the other hand, grows very well under them. using the all blue grow lights, you can use much less energy, produce much less heat, and still have all the beneficial affects of the algae. it really dosnt take a lot of 455nm light to keep the algae thriving. i have successfully kept fish alive in just a bag, with a battery operated LED, and some algae. even hermetically sealed, i have kept fish alive for weeks, with no more than a large bubble of actual airspace. it just goes to show how good the algae is at producing oxygen and sucking up ammonia. i believe that any hermetically sealed tank would need to have some kind of algae in it, with a constant light source. 

why did i do such experiments? i saw the scenario flash through my head and i wanted to test it. i have a fascination with ecology, probably because it has so many things going on. when i go manic, its a very appealing thing to think about, since it requires one to consider a large number of variables simultaneously. in order to produce a hermetically sealed environment and keep it alive, one would have to account for a very large number of processes going on simultaneously. very few attempts to produce a self sustaining environment take into account everything going on, so they are destined to fail. the first mistake i always see is that people turn the lights off. they think that its a realistic representation of the earth, since we have a day and night schedule. what they fail to take into account is the fact that oxygen is being produced on the other side of the planet during the night. when you turn a light off in a sealed tank, oxygen isnt being produced anywhere. its like eliminating the sun entirely.


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## dalfed (Apr 8, 2012)

Great read!! Just slightly amazed as I have a hard time counting to ten without the ol brain racing onto another idea


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## rtmaston (Jul 14, 2012)

i agree a very good reading. thanks for the time you took to write it.


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## Auban (Aug 8, 2010)

discovered another niche for the algae. 

flagfish!

the adults will even eat the algae itself. i would imagine a siamese algae eater would love such a tank...


anyone have any experience to add? if so, i would love to hear about it.


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