How long until the uglies start?

[Lasse]

say CuC do it but I think 40+ years of experience and hundreds of aquariums started could contribute to the final result significantly

That´s the way it can be - but you can also put it the other way around - one of the most important experiences I have gained during these +40 years is to introduce grazers already at a very early stage.

Let us say that we have a start biomass of 10 mg algae in our aquarium. With a daily doubling of this we will have 20 mg day 2, 40 mg day 3, 80 mg day 4, 160 mg day 5, 320 mg day 6 and 640 mg after the first week. the second week will be 1280, 2560, 5120, 10240, 20480, 40960 and 81920 mg day 14. The original 10 mg algae has grown to around 82 g day 14. The first 24 days will gain nearly 80 Kg if everything else is unlimited. In a real aquarium this will not happen - something will limit the growth before the 80 Kg - in most aquarium I´ll think it space that will be a limited factor.

But if you put in grazers - how will it effect the growth? Easy to understand - if you in my example put in grazers already day 1 - they only need to eat 10 mg a day in order to limit the algae growth and reach a steady state. If you wait until the first week - your population of grazers need to eat at least 320 mg/day and more if it is a problem- after the second week the biomass of grazers must be so large that their daily intake of algae is over 40 g a day!!!! if you want to have status que day 14 - if you want to lower the algae biomass - the CUC need to eat more than 40 g a day

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Spare time]

I really want to see such an examples of tanks never experienced uglies. Are you talking from your experience? Every tank I started will get the Uglies sooner or latter, sometimes really bad, sometimes barely visible. Cuc can certainly help but they are not magical cure. I found this BRS experiment when they cycled several tanks with different approaches quite interesting even not very scientifically sound. But finally every tank they started went throughout the ugly phase even months after.

I'm speaking from my experience. I've setup two different tanks where neither experienced anything outside of the initial diatoms.

 

[Spare time]

I really want to see such an examples of tanks never experienced uglies. Are you talking from your experience? Every tank I started will get the Uglies sooner or latter, sometimes really bad, sometimes barely visible. Cuc can certainly help but they are not magical cure. I found this BRS experiment when they cycled several tanks with different approaches quite interesting even not very scientifically sound. But finally every tank they started went throughout the ugly phase even months after.

Also it's important to note those brs tanks had no clean up crew