Sorry that I haven´t been able to post in the blog for a while. Have had other things on my plate. Unfortunately I don´t  have time to write a longer post now either but I wanted to share this youtube video with you. The video will tell you about the algae oil research that are done at the murdoch university

I also want to share another video with you that show some nice closeups of algae eating freshwater snails. I think many of these guys are really cute and I recommend getting snails if you have a problem with green algae growing in your aquarium. Unfortunatly they are not as effective towards all types of algae and will do very little to help control free flotaing algae such as mustard algae.

There are many different animals that can be used to prevent algae growth. Such animals include fish, snails and shrimps. This article will introduce you to one of these animals, the Malaysian Trumpet Snail. This snail is suitable for use in tropical freshwater aquariums and tropical ponds. It reproduces quickly and can become a problem that needs to be controlled itself. But as they are easier to fight than algae you might want to make that trade. If you get to many of this snail you can simple put a plate with a tasty snack on the bottom of your aquarium/pond and after a few hours a large number of snails will have congregated on the plate that can be lifted out of the tank with the snails still on it.

How well they work as algae eaters. Well I let you judge that for yourself from this video:

In this post I am going to give a short introduction to how to control algae. It can be beneficial to have red this post before reading any of my more advanced posts.

There are 3 basic ways of dealing with algae.
1. Chemical control
You can use chemicals that prevent algae growth or that kill algae to get the upper hand back. Drawbacks are that chemicals are unnatural, often expensive and may hurt other plants (or their growth) in ponds and aquariums. Another drawback in my eyes is that it is not natural.

2. Mechanical control
Mechanical control involves filtering the algae from the water. This method is seldom very effective in water with a lot of algae and/or water that get a lot of sunlight simply because the algae grows faster than your filter can remove them. This method is often very effective together with method 1. If you use a chemical that prevent algae growth you can use mechanical filtration to remove algae already there. This will not hurt other plants, just limit their growth during the treatment period.

3 Biological control
Biological controls involves using algae eating animals to remove algae and using plants to reduce the amount of nutrition available in the water so that algae don’t thrive. I.e. using plants (fast growing plant) to compete with the algae over the nutrition that is available in the water. This method is the one I think is best if it can be used successfully. Drawbacks are that it is best used as a preventative not as a reactive action. Another drawback is that it can not be used in pools as we don’t want, fish, snails, shrimps and plants in our pools.

Which method that is to preferred varies from situation to situation but generally it can be said that biological control should be used to prevent a problem, mechanical control can be used in non server cases, and that chemical control is the best option in severe cases. (preferable combined with mechanical control.