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Originally Posted by Delphinus
I should mention it's not the plants that don't grow, it's the cyanoslime and other crap (beard algae?? or something) that just overtakes it. I can prune the plants and clean the slime of the plants and other items, but the fuzzy stuff on the rocks and other items is impossible to remove. It's like the tank needs a complete tear-down and scrubbing from top to bottom once per month. That's just way too much work, when I compare to the incremental maintenance that the reef tanks require, there's no comparison. I actually find my one FW tank a much harder chore than my multiple reef tanks.
My thinking is that by abandoning the approach to having a highly planted tank that I can go to a tank that is not as brightly lit and may therefore be a bit easier to keep on top of.
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You do know the answer to this, you just don't know that you know.
If somebody asked you about a reef tank that had a similar issue what would you suggest they look for? Yep, phosphate. Specifically the amount of free phosphate or to be really specific the ratio of available nitrogen to poshphate. Here's a couple case studies:
http://albertaaquatica.com/index.php?showtopic=6078
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Originally Posted by Delphinus
So it sounds like I can expect the clowns to double in the next year or two? That would sort of explain why I suddenly find myself wondering if I'm actually noticing them bigger from one day to the previous. They were maybe 1.5" - 2" when I got them, and it took at least two years for them to double from that size, and then again maybe another two years to double from that size. To think that in another two years they will be double from here almost means we're talking about exponential growth.. I thought maybe it would be more of a tapered curve?
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Think of it this way, full grown clown loaches are 15 to 18 inches long and much more massive than you might think. They are rare to see and probably don't hit this size in aquariums until 15 years old, if ever. I know if you look around you'll see plenty of places that list the max size at 6" but they're wrong. So the 50 will do for a while but you'll be looking at that 75 or bigger eventually so maybe just get it over with now.