# Growing Spirulina in your tank...?



## trunk (Jun 25, 2010)

Has anyone had luck purposely growing Spirulina in your tank with your cichlids? Is this even a good idea? If it is possible and a good idea, where can I find the starter algae and how should I get started?

Thanks


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## John27 (Jun 6, 2010)

A google search revealed this article:

http://gpasi.org/forums/index.php?topic=64.0

From reading that, the only issue I see from trying to grow it IN the aquarium, is that at temperatures below 82F it appears to grow slowly, meaning your Cichlids will eat it faster than it can grow and will likely destroy it.

I like the idea of building grow tubes like the guy in the link did, then just feeding your Cichlids with it. Let us know!

Also, to sum up his article to answer your questions, apparently University of Texas sells the strains of algae, so that is where I would look! You cannot use store bought, as it's been "deactivated" The only think in his instructions I would change, is to use Baking Soda or Epsom salts instead of PH Up (save money)

-John


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## trunk (Jun 25, 2010)

OK John! You are quickly gaining the gold star of research awards. ItÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s also making me a little ashamed. Maybe I should have done more research before posting LOL. But thanks for the find I will let you know if I make any progress on this idea. Including the C.B.A. (Cost benefit Analysis)


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## cjacob316 (Dec 4, 2008)

pam chin, a regular in the chat room, uses spirulina from health food stores to seed her tanks for spirulina growth, and she does it with quite a bit of success from what i understand, she's a huge proponent of promoting grazing, especially for her trophs


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## aquariam (Feb 11, 2010)

Spirulina is not a natural food for your cichlids. It doesn't grow in the lake. Other kinds of algaes do.

If you want something for your fish to graze you can just grow good old diatom and green fuzz algae and you'll be fine.

Commercially available high grade spirulina foods are perfectly good. Dainichi's encapsulation process in particular impresses me and I've never had a need to try to grow any algae but what shows up naturally. I 'assist' green hair algae with a small dose of multivitamins and minerals once a week.










All my rocks are coated in it as is the glass. The gobies get about 50 percent of their food this way.


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## cjacob316 (Dec 4, 2008)

i'm trying to get green algae to grow in my labeo tank, but no success so far, i might have to let my nitrates get a little higher


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## Rick_Lindsey (Aug 26, 2002)

Now you've got me thinking of a screen-based algal scrubber... Instead of (or in addition to) scraping all the algae off one of the screens once a week, just drop them in your tropheus (or other herbivorous grazer) tank?

-Rick (the armchair aquarist, who so wants to do an algal scrubber, but admits it is unlikely to happen any time soon)


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## trunk (Jun 25, 2010)

There were two reasons I thought about adding Spirulina. One, I have read how good it is for the cichlids particularly for color. Two, I was looking for a non-planting method of absorbing some of the nitrates "naturally". This is NOT to eliminate water changes as I know this is not realistic or a good idea. Instead I want to use algae to make the water better while giving the fish fresh quality algae.

If I need to grow algae separately to maintain a colony of algae to restock the tank when the fish eat it all then so be it.

I am not sure whether this algae exist in lake Malawi particularly but I know that it is native in other rift valley lakes. I believe this quote is directed toward some rift lakes in Kenya. But, It is plausible that it exist in other similar lakes in Malawi and Tanzania.

"It is a planktonic blue-green algae found in warm water alkaline volcanic lakes. Wild spirulina sustains huge flocks of flamingos in the alkaline East African Rift Valley lakes."

http://www.lightparty.com/Health/Spirulina.html


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## aquariam (Feb 11, 2010)

cjacob316 said:


> i'm trying to get green algae to grow in my labeo tank, but no success so far, i might have to let my nitrates get a little higher


My nitrates are close to nil. I do water changes every 2 days. I grow it with a multivitamin/mineral supplement, a vitamin b complex supplement and a vitamin D supplement. Just a tiny bit of each capsule, ground to powder and sprinkled on the surface of the water at night. I do it about once a week. I use about 1/10th of the capsule for a 38G tank.

It gets you the fuzzy green algae every time. I've tried it on a harder water pH 8 tank I have and a softer water pH 7 tank and it works in both cases.


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## John27 (Jun 6, 2010)

According to the above listed source, most algae does not grow well, sometimes not at all, in a pH above 8.2~8.5, so something to think about if your not getting Algae.


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## krfhsf (Dec 25, 2008)

This is a algea screen I feed to some w/c petro polyodons. They would not eat untill they got the algea in their guts. Feed it to them for a couple of weeks and then they ate everything in site. I don't know what kind of algea but santa monicas algea scrubber works. I run 2 of them.

http://s297.photobucket.com/albums/mm21 ... CN0765.flv

http://s297.photobucket.com/albums/mm21 ... CN0769.flv


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## aquariam (Feb 11, 2010)

That's a really cool contraption .

Do you feed your algae anything in that container or does it just grow in plain water?

Are you growing algae that you brought in specially or are you just doing the green hair algae that grows automatically given the right conditions?


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## cjacob316 (Dec 4, 2008)

is there any particular light that should be used for green algae? I know i had success with 10000K before, but i'm currently using dual 6500K, I do have a good bit of the brown algae growing finally, just not strand/hair like yet


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## jrf (Nov 10, 2009)

I donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t know what light spectrum it prefers. But, at about 1 watt per gallon of 6,700K over my 40 breeder I grow green algae fairly fast. The lights are on 8 hours a day and my nitrates are usually below 20 and above 10 depending on how aggressive I am with water changes. The algae does have a preference to growing higher up in the tank where the light is more intense. So, IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢m sure a deeper tank would benefit from more watts per gallon.


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## cjacob316 (Dec 4, 2008)

since my fish are just juvies I haven't stacked the rocks very high high, that might be a good reason why


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## Rick_Lindsey (Aug 26, 2002)

aquariam said:


> That's a really cool contraption .
> 
> Do you feed your algae anything in that container or does it just grow in plain water?


Not my contraption, but unless I'm mistaken that's an algae scrubber, and he's "feeding" it whatever waste his fish produce . Drop it in your sump with either a small pump or gravity feed, an voila! A rather different sort of bio filter.

-Rick (the armchair aquarist, who wants one!)


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## trunk (Jun 25, 2010)

@krfhsf: Ha those sure look like happy fish! Reminds me of a bunch of kids around a box of pizza. This is just encouraging me that this IS a good idea.


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## cjacob316 (Dec 4, 2008)

promoting grazing in your mbuna and trophs is always a good thing, especially those with the overturned top lip like labeos, trophs and gobies, those cichlids are built to graze


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## adain24 (Nov 10, 2010)

Thanks for share good idea....


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