if you are looking to breakdown algae spores, you can use UV sterilizer which is much cheaper.
if you are looking to breakdown algae spores, you can use UV sterilizer which is much cheaper.
no will not, those beneficial bacteria that colonized your filter media, substrate or rocks will not be effected.
As mentioned before, the only way to rid algae is to destroy them at cellular level and the only way know so far is the use of UVC.
That being said, UV sterilization is dependent on the wattage of the bulb aas well as the flow rate. Effectively speaking, it only treats the symptom and not the root or cause of an algae infestation.
It is effective against Green Water and free floating spores. However what is in the tank reminds in the tank.
I cannot stress more the importance of knowing how to control water perimeters, lighting and nutrients.
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The title below my name does not make me a guru...listen at your own risk!...
David, you can stress it 1000 times but whenever there is new product that promise to get rid of algae every one will flock in, taking shortcut is a human instinct
don't 100% depend on products like this and UV.
keep and mantain a healthy tank, you can use supplements but don't depend on them solely. you need healthy plants and well maintained ecosystem inside the tank.
just like a healthy person can't depend solely on supplement to keep healthy. need to exercise regularly. thou it cannot stop him or her from minor flu from occuring but helps to reduce occurrence and recovery.
Learning the hardway, not the highway.
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110% agree with you Shadow.....
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The title below my name does not make me a guru...listen at your own risk!...
So many gears in our tank these days, are we planting or gearing ? I feel this just an another way for aquarist to find a way in to their balance.
It's not 100% successful, in the end you still control light amount, co2, ferts, pruning, water change etc.
And please note hearing from other neighbor forum, this should be replaced every 6 months / year. And this not cheap!
So be wise before purchase.
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I've been following the Twinstar system for a while too... not sure if you guys have seen this but just to share, the manufacturer did some tests using 2 planted tanks with the exact same setups, but one is equipped with the twinstar system and one without (this is the best way to do a test comparison for such equipment, rather than just based on single tank tests, since everyone's setup is different):
http://www.twinstarnano.com/iqvbbs/b..._user&wr_id=24
From the test results, it seems to work in inhibiting initial algae growth and allowing the plants to better out-compete algae, but this is with a new setup that starts with the Twinstar system from the beginning and with all the proper conditions made to avoid algae (not in tanks with existing algae, which probably already have underlying issues that need to be solved first).
They even did another test with 2 more tanks, but this time they set them up with the worst conditions to purposely encourage algae growth... by using mostly slower growing plants, low plant mass, too much light and lots of fertilizers:
http://www.twinstarnano.com/iqvbbs/b..._user&wr_id=15
Interestingly those tank conditions look very similar to what new aquarists would usually do when setting up a "simple" iwugami tank with just HC or glosso.
In those conditions, algae still grows like crazy in both tanks (which demonstrates that its not a "magic bullet" to totally eliminate algae)... just that in the twinstar equipped tank the algae takes more time to appear and blooms less aggressively.
So i guess those tests describe the Twinstar system as a tool to help reduce or slow down algae growth, allowing users to have a slightly wider margin of error (ie. if they happen to slack a week in maintenance, or overstock or overfeed abit too much)... but for it to work effectively, fundamental conditions in the tank still needs to be kept in balance or else algae will still grow.
Btw, i'm not promoting Twinstar, i'm just a potential customer who is also considering the product and doing my research too.
For me, I look it this way. I would like to enjoy sitting down watching my tank for hours. Yes EI method works, provided I strictly adhere to the dosing and water change regime.
Unlike Amano with his legions of assistant, I'm a one man army. Like anyone else, we can't be pre-occupied only with this strict regime, our daily lives need to move on too. I know, on ocassions when we slack in maintenance, we have to work triple hard to get things back to normal.
I don't mind spend some on technology which can help me maintain some of the things that I need to do manually, really I don't mind. I like to enjoy fish/plant keeping and not labour too much while basic water change, dosing and testing is still a must.
So let's not shun gears or new technology or what not. Would you prefer to second guess your tank pH or manually shut of C02 everday?
I would like to try this product as my tank is a tall tank and require high lighting to penetrate light to my HC. Stop of buying a PAR meter (another gear), I guess I'll try this first. Lighting is the problem for my setup (too much) and the combination of difficult plants (low + high light requirements) with varying nutrient uptake.
Everybody's tank is different, so what remedy that works 100% for one might not work 100% for others. Anyway, once I start using it, I'll share the results here. Should be interesting and not disappointing I hope.
Last edited by greenie; 14th Nov 2013 at 03:25.
Hi, i've been doing researched too on Twinstar and what i found is more or less of what Urban had said.
It is not the holy grail to vanish all algae forever. There will be algae,you can even see it on the twinstar nano plate holder.
The best is to have a balance of all element in an aquatic tank and with the amount spend,IMHO i would rather spend it on my
2 lt of seachem excel which is going to last me quite sometime to finish it.
I was in Hong Kong 3 weeks back and saw a few tank with this device. BBA existed on all tanks. The owner is an Aquascaping award winner . The price is rather high. Most of us tend to have BBA issues rather than any other algae I think which this device don't seem to have an effect on.
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Sleepy_lancs
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An afternoon trimming my watery garden is better
then an afternoon with a therapist
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My bet we see mostly bba in LFS because, sometime they share filters and co2 among couple tanks, as efficient as possible
or else they end up with high operational expenditure, and slash the revenue
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ok giving up my obstinate,
Get Nano from our good retail friend, plugged them in last night. Will review what happen next, if it screw i will rescape.
Hopefully could be my cleaner assistant,
Amano keep jumping out of the tank, i hate to keep them purchased, and Winter is not their breed seasonal too.
Just a quick update to share. Brown algae has invaded my tank despite Twinstar being in there... Gotten algae crew to clean up as much as possible. My conclusion..... Twinstar or no Twinstar, at the end of the day, algae will still appear and algae cleaning crew is still a necessity. Maybe I am doing something wrong, not too sure... :/
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6 bps for 2 feet is a lot, if you get BBA still, check flow and light intensity.
Mine is 3 feet, 1 year+ tank, 3-4 Bps, 8x Filter flow capacity, never hit by any BBA.
applogize, yours is brown algae. Not BBA
Correction,
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