# Pearling - video



## graybot (Apr 24, 2011)

My planted 29g tank is pretty young and is still going through some algae growing pains... LOTS of brown algae, and some brush algae forming on some of the more exposed leaves of my amazon swords. I'm not too worried about it, and I'm just letting nature take its course with the stuff.

For appearance sake, I went through and brushed the loose brown algae off the leaves, performed a water change, and tucked the previously floating wisteria plants back behind the driftwood in my tank... the end result is a LOT more light being absorbed by the swords. I also recently started dosing Excel for CO2.

About 15 minutes after cleaning the leaves and allowing more light in the swords began to pearl like crazy! Some of these bubble streams may be from abrasions caused by the leaf cleaning, but even newer pristine leaves that had no algae became speckled with tiny bubbles. I've also done the same leaf cleaning in the past and didn't see these bubble streams showing up... so I'm not so sure they were caused by leaf damage.

ANYWAY.

I took a little video... it was hard to get the tiny tiny bubbles in focus, but thought you guys might enjoy this (don't mind the convict cichlid fry darting in and out of the shots):


----------



## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

Cool. Plants tend to do it more after water changes. If you really want to see them pearl, try on some DIY CO2. Excel should help with the algae issues I can see.


----------

