Barley Straw can get rid of cyanobacteria, diatoms and unicellular green algae

[oz]

anyone ever heard of this ?

I read that

"Barley Straw can get rid of cyanobacteria, diatoms and unicellular green algae"

and

"It does not seem to have any adverse effects on invertebrates or fish"

So I'm thinking there could be some useful application in reef aquarium if barley straw can really get rid of cyanobacteria, diatoms and unicellular green algae.


Link http://www.newscientist.com/lastword/article.jsp?id=lw1034

http://www.cswgs.org/Resource_Education/information_on_barley_straw.htm

http://www.naturalsolutionsetc.com/BarleyAbout.htm

you can find more on google with search on "barley straw and pond use"

Also in another thread it was mentioned that this is what Algone is. Anyone here can confirm this ? thanks.

 

[piercho]

AES sells barley straw, barley straw pellets, and barely straw concentrate (Barley Xtract). According to AES tech talk 37, the straw should be located in moving/oxegenated water in direct sunlight, and takes about 6-8 weeks of bacterial breakdown to become active. The pellets are less complicated to use, and last a year. The concentrate is for direct use. AES claims that barley straw is a general algaecide, with no effect on higher plant life. What's "higher" plant life, I wonder. SAVs? Would your calcerous red algaes go tits up? Dunno....

 

[Plantbrain]

Barely straw is not an algicide, it does have algal static properties perhaps.
It's main usage has been in ponds.
Personally and bale of rotting straw in my pond vs algae, I'd take the algae. The pellets, extract etc are attempts to get around this, but........the research shows this activity diminishes after 6 months. So it'd better be freshly rotted.

It also does not work on a single attached alga to date in any test we ran where the algae was actively growing in log phase.
I did a thorough literative review of this stuff about a year ago.
There's conflicting info and my own runs have also placed a great deal of doubt on this which does not address the cause of the problem in the first place, and opts for a "take a pill for the cure" mentality.

It also is generally applied to freshwater systems, seldom marine. I do not think it'll harm your macro's but I will not say it won't either. It did no harm to any large filamentous algae I've tried against It had no effect on Hydrodictyon according to one researcher.

The only real evidence I found was that it increased Rotifer densities (but are small enough to be ignored by most fish)which will eat things like Green water algae which is the main usage for this product.
Cyano's, best to clean the tank out good and keep up on feeding/fish critters/macro's

When the macro's grow well, the problem algae generally don't.
At 28$-30$ a 16oz bottle at the LFS, I'd spend my $ elsewhere.

Regards,
Tom Barr