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From: thuan@garnet.berkeley.edu (Thuan Nguyen)
Newsgroups: alt.aquaria,rec.aquaria
Subject: Re: A talk with the Coralife Plant Fertilizer people
Keywords: plant fertilizers
Message-ID: <21210@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 17 Jan 90 16:35:37 GMT
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU
Lines: 34

richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) writes:

<Coralife: ... plants don't use ammonia which is what fish excrete, 
<	       they use nitrates.
<
<R: (Doesn't this contradict what I just read here someplace ?)

	Yeah,  I think there was a recent article which said that ammonium
ions are attracted to the negative ions in the soil and that plant
roots use mostly ammonium.

<R: What can you say about algae ? I used to have blue-green
<   but now that I'm using RO water I get hair algae.
<
<Coralife: ...Thread algae, however thrives on silicates which are not 
<             removed by the RO filter.

	I don't know for sure if thread algae thrives on silicates.
Diatoms certainly do.  However, I'm sure that the silicates would
be removed by your reverse osmosis (RO) filter.  Why shouldn't it be?
Sodium ions are removed, as are Chlorine ions.  Silicon is between
these 2 in size, so it should also be too large to cross the cellulose 
membrane.

	My opinion is that the person you talked too, Dr. Tooley (?)
either knows zip about the Coralife fertilizer or else he's trying 
to avoid telling trade secrets.

					Thuan

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Thuan Nguyen			  		     thuan@garnet.berkeley.edu
University of California, San Francisco/Berkeley Bioengineering Graduate Group
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