PART 29: WHY ALGAE?

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A N S W E R: The following aspects make Algae so special:

Algae saved our planet by transforming our atmosphere to oxygen, allowing life to exist. Algae saved us again by providing the Earth's first food. Early Earth supported neither living creatures nor food. About 3.7 billion years ago, no life existed because the Earth's surface was too hot and there was no oxygen. The Earth's atmosphere was composed of a blanket of deadly and heat trapping CO2 and methane gas. As per Fossil records, a tiny plant emerged in the primordial soup and did an extraordinary thing. The plant absorbed the sun's energy and used a chemical reaction, photosynthesis, to split a CO2 and a water molecule.

The tiny plant converted the carbon atom into a high-energy green plant bond, a hydrocarbon, by taking two hydrogen atoms from H2O and released the oxygen molecule to the atmosphere. Algae had begun its work to change the atmosphere.

Algae are good indicators of the atrophic status of a water body, that is, the degree of pollution and nutrients in that water. A lake dominated by green algae has relatively "clean" oligotrophic water. Green Algae do not produce substances that are toxic to animals. Green algae are a very normal and naturally positive component of the aquatic arena that benefits overall water quality and aquatic life.

Algae systematically collected solar energy, sequestered carbon atoms and released oxygen. Moving at the incredibly slow rate of one tiny molecule at a time, algae transformed the harsh carbon dioxide atmosphere that could not sustain life to an oxygen atmosphere that supported life. Algae took another 3 billion years to create sufficient oxygen to support other forms of life because land plants evolved from algae only about 500 million years ago.

Algae's atmospheric transformation enabled the development of other water plants, fish, insects, land plants, amphibians, reptiles and eventually land animals. Even though microalgae are the tiniest plants on our planet, each day algae create 70% of the atmospheric oxygen, more than all the forest and fields combined!

Many of the earliest plants and water creatures depended on algae as a food source. Algae serve as nutritious food for everything from the tiniest phytoplankton to the largest mammal on earth, the great blue whale, because the plant offers an excellent set of proteins, minerals and vitamins. Every day, while algae captures CO2 and releases pure oxygen, the green biomass supplies food for 100 times more organisms than any other food source on Earth.

Algae use plentiful and often surplus inputs, including sunshine, CO2, Fish Waste and water. Algae photosynthesis strips CO2 and nutrients from the surrounding water and produces plant biomass made up of various forms of lipids (oils), protein and carbohydrates. The process releases considerable pure oxygen to the atmosphere.

Now, it must be clear how the water in a DPM Type Natural Fishbowl I Aquarium is adequately oxygenated even without the use of Air Stones and Air Pumps. Let’s talk a little more on Maintenance and Lighting in case of a DPM Type Natural Fishbowl | Aquarium next. NEXT >>  << Previous

PART 29: WHY ALGAE? by Debi Prasad Mahapatra is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.