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Re: My sympathies!

Posted By: Wintek <wintek@aol.com>
Date: Tuesday, 29 June 1999, at 3:34 p.m.

In Response To: phosphates? (Michelle)

Hello

Phosphate is a tough nut to crack. As far as I know, the chemical is not harmful to fish, but it sure makes for a lot of algae growth.

I control phosphate in my tank with live plants, but there is a lot of extra stuff that goes with the plants.

Phosphate control without plants or expensive phosphate removing resins (which work quite well) is all about removing solid waste from the tank. Intensive gravel vacumming for several days in a row will remove what is currently decaying, and then filtration through very fine filter media combined with weekly cleaning of the filter pads and gravel should get the phosphate and algae levels down.

The algae will thrive long a