Algae wafer

Performance & sizing

Core numbers for matching this unit to your tank and electrical plan.

Power

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Flow rate

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Noise

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Dimensions

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Price range

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Tank fit (L)

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Consumables & maintenance

Follow the manufacturer schedule for seals, impellers, media, and other consumables.

Description

Start with what a wafer is for rather than with what is in it. The Merck Veterinary Manual is blunt about how little is settled in fish nutrition: requirements are published for only a handful of species, and beyond a rough sorting into carnivore, omnivore and herbivore, the protein and lipid a given fish needs is simply unknown. That sorting is the one thing a keeper can act on, and a wafer is the herbivore end of it in a form that reaches the floor. Reaching the floor is the practical half. Merck asks for feeds that float for surface fish and items that sink rapidly for bottom-dwellers, then says something sharper about how most community tanks are actually run. Loricariids and Corydoras are expected to live on the leftovers from everyone else; the manual calls that unacceptable and asks for targeted feeding instead. A wafer heavy enough to go down before the tetras notice is how that instruction gets carried out. One nutrient is worth naming because its absence is visible. Fish need ascorbic acid delivered in the feed, and Merck says most fish foodstuffs should be supplemented with a stabilised form of it. Where it runs short, hobbyists and farmers call the result broken back disease, and badly affected fish show extreme scoliosis. Vitamin C degrades in storage, so an old tub is a worse feed than a fresh one even when the two look identical. A caveat about the label. Merck's nutrition chapter never mentions algae, spirulina or fibre, so the recipe printed on the tub is the manufacturer's claim rather than a veterinary one. What is documented is the delivery: a sinking feed, aimed at a particular fish, at a ration Merck puts near 3 % of body weight a day for a maintained adult.

Source

• merckvetmanual.com — https://www.merckvetmanual.com/exotic-and-laboratory-animals/aquarium-fish/nutritional-diseases-of-fish

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