Hello everyone, I've had something happen to my planted 10G that I just can't explain. I have an established, 6 year old planted 10G with sand-topped mineralized topsoil substrate and Dwarf Sag carpeting the bottom. I use pretty high light, so the dwarf sag normally stays pretty low. The tank became neglected over the last couple of years and developed a bad double infection of Cladophora Algae and pond snails, and both of them were EVERYWHERE! To make a long story short, I ended up moving to an older apartment building in NYC with old water pipes...the kind where the water will come out brown for a few seconds if you don't run it regularly. Naturally I was concerned about the chemistry of this new water when I moved here, but I had to use it and I hoped that my fish would get used to it. Not only are they thriving in it, but whatever is in it has killed 99% of the pond snails (but spared my nerite snail), and caused my dwarf sag to increase in size a few inches within a couple of weeks! Oh...the Cladophora algae has mostly turned grey and is dying also!!! Any takers on explaining this?
Unexpected Good Fortune from "Bad" water?
- Thread starter Vince G.
- Start date
You should bottle your water and sell it. Since your water is brown (rusty?) You might just have enough plants that love iron and outcompete the cladophora algae for nutrients? Dwarf sagittaria does not like too low iron content - might not have been low enough for deficiencies to show (like yellowing leaves), but it wasn't exactly thriving either.
