thanx. missed out on this before i post my question. thanx again

Give u a small thinking for the weekend ...

David only have an airstone, and given information from forum is such algae takes in nitrate and your mesage of "nothing gonna remove the ammonia", where the nitrites and nitrates comes from ?

I hope u help me think also , and maybe David can give some explanation to this
But the 100% water change is done mainly to remove the ammonia & nitrite, rite?

Another pic taken today. Same tub!

desireless,

How often and how much u change the water? And why ur water doesn't turn green?
Is it white worm danger to goldfish? How often u clean the filter media?

How often and how much u change the water?
I change water every 6-10 days. Depends.

And why ur water doesn't turn green?
Because I am running on filtration and there's wall algae.

Is it white worm danger to goldfish?
Not that I know of. But planaria tends to irritate my fishes' gills

How often u clean the filter media?
As I say I do not use OHF nor canister filter. The last time I washed my sponge filters was 3 months ago.

Desireless,

How much water do u change? 100%?

i think now its your algae doing most of the job rather than sponge filter

Yes. That's how I do water change. You would realise that most bros do 100% water change here. Please read this topic again. Your answer can be found at least twice in this topic alone.

Hahaha.. Sponge filters are toy for my fishes.. Sponge soccer

hello everybody, i just joined this forum.

looks like u guys having a conversation about nitrogen. whether it's ammonia/ium, nitrite or nitrate. as an aquascaper, i have dealt with so many algae past these years. as almost of u already know, algae is a low level plant that don't have complete organs. higher plants have at least three parts, first is the root, then the branch (i don't know in english, in indonesia it is batang), and lastly the leaf itself. is higher plants superior to algae, can't tell that. but one thing for sure, algae is one of the most successful living creature in this world. for billions of years, they only change a little bit (call it evolution if u like). algae have adapting themself in those many years. almost all algae don't fussy with their source of foods. they can take nitrogen in any form. the best one is ammonia/ium (nh3/nh4). that's because it's easier to strip of nitrogen in this form. their chemical bond is not so hard to break-off, and need less energy to do that. while the oxidized form of ammonia/ium is nitrite and nitrate. as one consider the word oxidize, that means that the chemical is already reacted with oxygen n got "burned" (for iron, we call it "rust"). material or chemical that already got oxidized, usually is harder to utilize. the same applies to nitrite n nitrate. plants (low n high) need more energy to utilize the nitrogen from no2 n no3. that's because the chemical bond is tighter than nh3/nh4. unlike high level plants, algae have advance ways to utilize their foods along with lights. while high level plants need spesific light spectrum to do photosynthesis, algae is enough with scarce light. so it is almost need no effort to grow algae. just give them their food n enough lights, voila, comes the algae. one more thing, liebig's law of minimum, high level plants need other chemical to utilize some chemical, ie to utilize nitrogen, there should be enough phosporus n kalium (potassium). if one of the components is missing, the photosynthesis will get disturb. that's just the macro elements, there are still micro elements such as zn, fe, mo, mg, ca, etc (n one will affect another). while algae, they don't get too picky about their foods. given only nitrogen, they will grow. that's why algae still exist in this planet, it's because their superior adaptibility.

conclusion: it's not important to consider that green water eat ammonia/ium, nitrite or nitrate, the important one is, that it's just their source of energy and they can use all of them, but they prefer to use the one that have not been oxidized. that's why the readings for no2 n no3 in greenwater usually zero, because they don't have a chance to even exist. n the readings for nh3/nh4 is usually very low, because they use it first.

ps. i'm sorry if my reply is oot. n i hope we can share benefits. thanks.

tks aquaplantae for sharing i'm curious of the following - does algae under cloudy sky or in the night take in ammonia/ium, nitrite or nitrate? if not, how much light is needed before the algae takes them in? is there any difference between algae in green water and algae on wall?

i think there's a problem with the cloudy sky here. there's no rule how cloudy is cloudy, so i can't answer this question. my point of view about cloudy might be different with your pov.

there is no guidelines afaik for the light requirement so that algae could photosynthesize. as in the night they don't photosynthesize, but respirate, they'll consume o2. so it's really necessary to provide additional aeration to the pond/tub/aquarium etc. and the result is, in the night they won't utilize any of the nitrogen source. maybe to find out about light requirements so that algae could photosynthesize, u could try googling with keyword par (photosynthetic active radiation).

of course there's a difference between greenwater n wall algae. they're a completely different species. greenwater usually caused by spirulina sp and volvox, while wall algae could be caused by cladophora sp, etc. greenwater is caused by unicellular organism, whereas wall algae is caused by multicellular organism. u could find out more about algae in www.thekrib.com

Aquaplantae, solid knowledge ! You are getting the correct stuff.
Unicelluar vs multicelluar .... few thousands variations to talk about.

anyway, the root system of plant has special function n enyzme to store and stripe of the complex nitrogens to simple form with other minerals before delivering to the stalk and leaves thus result in releasing O ions into water as by-products.

Lawrence, in a cloudy day, not hovering dark clouds, the temperature will be around 6000 kelvins. that's enough to make the green works. however, photosynthesis does not immediately start, rather the organisms require to absorb sufficient energy first. usually within 30 mins.

tehehehehe, thanks.




this maybe true for terrestrial plants, as they utilize nitrogen from earth by their roots. but for aquatic plants, almost all of their body parts can utilize nutrients from water body. so water plants can use their body parts to take up nutrients and release their photosynthesis byproduct o2. this is due to the supply of nitrogen in the water, not in the substrate. as for some of the aquatic plants, their root is only acting as an anchoring device. while their stalk and leaf is the one to collect nutrients.



actually, when we're talking about cloudy sky here, the important factor is not the color spectrum, but rather the lux/lumens (light intensity). all across the earth, the color spectrum on the equatorial is between 5000-6500 kelvin. so whether it's cloudy or not the color spectrum still fall in those range. i've just read up baensch aquarium atlas vol 1, in page 46, it's stated about light intensity:
-. daylight in clear sky is about 75000 lux
-. plants in nature get about 9500-38000 lux
-. surface plants in aquarium get about 2400-4800 lux
-. plants in middle tank range; lower light requirement limit get about 300-1200 lux
-. cryptocoryne and other plants requiring little light, adaptable plants get about 75-150 lux
-. algae could even utilize light as low as 50 lux (not stated in the book)

Thanks Aquaplantae and Matrix