# Green Water?



## vidiots (Jun 17, 2006)

Marilyn1998 said:


> I have had my plants about 2 months now. I was trying out liquid ferts and got green water. I have tried water changes daily of 90% and it comes back.
> I did a 4 day black out, adding ferts EI and feeding fish daily. This was the only time the sheet came up from the tank. I removed the sheet to find most of my discus laying on their sides. I did a 90% WC, they eventually recovered.
> That was 2 days ago.
> 
> ...


I have battled that demon before. The UV will help, so will very fine filtering. If you don't have very fine filter cartridges you might be able to try a product called "Filter Aid". It is this brown liquid that kinda gums up and cloggs your filter making a coarse filter into a fine filter. In my experience green water is almost always caused by excess ammonia, even if it is not accumulating enough to show up on a test kit but being converted to nitrate from a heavy fish load. I have also had ammonia test kits read zero when there is signifigant ammonia in the water because the test kit was several years old. The problem is that water changes and fertilizers kinda feed the bloom once it is started. The bright side is these green water blooms usually burn themselves out within a couple weeks even if you do absolutely nothing. 

You might also try shortening your lights on time to like 10hrs per day. I've had plants grow fine with 2wpg for 8hrs per day. Ive found that longer days just make more algae and they don't really seem to make the plants grow any faster than shorter days.

The hardcore plant geeks will tell you that 0 nitrates combined with high levels of other nutrients is an open invitation to algae. They will tell you that only fertilizing most of the nutrients a plant needs is not enough you need to ensure that all their needs are met. Algae on the other hand will take advantage of this nutrient imbalance. Zero nitrates can also be a symptom of a failure of your nitrogen cycle, which is often caused by the use of anti-biotics or other aquarium problem cures in a bottle.

Believe it or not, I've actually cultured green water for daphnia and brine shrimp food. I can tell you that it takes deliberate effort on your part to keep the bloom going and not having it eventually crash and die off on you.

Hope this helps.


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## Marilyn1998 (Mar 8, 2006)

Thanks Vidiot. I am leary about putting more chemicals in the water. I took off the lights that were 56w. Now I am running only 130W. Does this help at all? Also, I am limiting the light to the 10 hours you suggested. Today the tank is as bad as my before WC pic from yesterday. ARG! Its been 3 weeks!!

Well, got the Filstar running. IT has the two size foams, the ceramic noodles and the micro filter. The UV is going back. No matter what size hose I buy it doesnt work on BOTH ends, just the filter or the UV. I called Big Al's and they said the Rena is too powerful, that I need to buy a pump. Too much $$ in my eyes for something to rid me of green water.

I have had this murk now for 3 weeks. Gonna run the Filstar, and not do a WC until Friday. This is so frustrating. Anything else I can do? My discus wont stand for WC's to be much loinger than that apart.


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## G1ll (Mar 21, 2006)

Vidiots pretty much covered everything.

What did the trick for me was lowering my light period to ~4 hours a day coupled with a 30% water change (although this seems to be questionable) 3 or 4 times a week. 

Does your tank receive a lot of natural light? You may want to try keeping windows closed during the above process.

Another thing that would definitely help would be to buy some fast growing plants such as hornwort. Your tank is relatively lightly planted and more plants will compete with the greenwater for nutrients.


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## trustbran (Jun 27, 2006)

A UV will kill it in a couple of days......killed my GW in 2 days and never came back...


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## Brilliant (Apr 11, 2006)

Aww I was interested to see what a UV would do in this battle.

Get a Vortex Model XL...its cheap...works by itself. I couldnt imagine having a two foot deep tank without one. You wont regret it.


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## Marilyn1998 (Mar 8, 2006)

I tried the Vortex XL, but physically cannot handle that filter. SO, I bought the AA 24W UV internal filter (with own pump)from Petsmart and ran that. I am gonna run it every Friday with the 50% WC. 


THE GREEN WATER IS GONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Got more plants, went back to 186W for 10 hours on a timer, got another driftwood and the EI ferts (pmdd 1/8 tsp, 2 caps Excel daily except WC day) seem to have done the trick. I cant beleive, in my LOWLIGHT tank just how mucxh my plants are growing! Even the anubias nana is almost triple in size!!! MY water sprite has grown almost 4 inches in two weeks. I am finally feeling good about this tank again!

Thanks everyone who helped!!!


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## RachPreach (Jan 16, 2006)

I think im starting to develop this green water. Its not noticable just looking at the tank head on, but when I look down the length of the tank, the water looks kinda cloudy and green, but not bad. I dont have the money to buy a uv sterilizer, so what can I do to prevent this from getting worse?


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## Lissette (Apr 2, 2005)

Why are your plants potted?

Any brand of Uv will take care of green water. Personally, I use the Jebo Uv, and it works great. Even though it's cheap, it gets the job done. I've no complaints.

It can also be attached to your Rena Filter very easily (JEBO takes 3 size tubings).

But as I've often read on these forums, if you don't correct the problem causing your green water, it will come back, even if you clear it with a uv.

I know. I battled green water for months.


Lissette


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## fresh_lynny (Mar 9, 2006)

Lissette said:


> Why are your plants potted?
> 
> Any brand of Uv will take care of green water. Personally, I use the Jebo Uv, and it works great. Even though it's cheap, it gets the job done. I've no complaints.
> 
> ...


Not really...kill it with the UV and it will be gone. Do a steady fert schdule and it will be gone, period. It is something that almost everyone has to battle. Green dust is another thing. The good news is, it really is not harmful to anyone or anything, it is just an eyesore. i use a Turbotwist 9w for my 90 gal and it is all but history in 2-3 days. Then I run it for a day after every water change. As soupy and gross as it was, I have not seen it again....yay~


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## Marilyn1998 (Mar 8, 2006)

RachPreach,
there is a product by AP called Algae Destroyer. One dose cleared my tank in half an hour. I got it at petsmart, but it is online too.

Now, that said, I agree to fix the problem. And I agree chemicals do more harm than good. Green water is caused by too much ammonia. And an inbalance of light, ferts, and CO2. GEt your balance back and the green water will stay away. Once you can afford a UV, it is great to have.


Lissette,

You asked why my plants are potted. :icon_roll Well, there are a few reasons:

(1) I have discus, and am hedging my bets that I may need to remove them for salt dosing once in a bit. (even tho I havent had to for a few months)

(2) I only have that pebble substrate and am very leary about planting in it. I am worried the plants that are roots feeders wont get enough nutrients even with tabs. Also, I am worried the plants will get jostled and keep floating.

(3) I am worried that when I syphon the gravel I will uproot the plants since the pebble rock is so large.

(4) THe biggest thing, I keep moving the plants every few days trying to decide how I Want the tank to look.

All you plant gurus, can you address these issues?? I would LOVE to plant the plants in the gravel and be done with the pots! I am not ready to redo the substrate. I am even MORE afraid of putting a soil substrate in there!


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## fresh_lynny (Mar 9, 2006)

Marilyn1998 said:


> RachPreach,
> there is a product by AP called Algae Destroyer. One dose cleared my tank in half an hour. I got it at petsmart, but it is online too.
> 
> Now, that said, I agree to fix the problem. And I agree chemicals do more harm than good. Green water is caused by too much ammonia. And an inbalance of light, ferts, and CO2. GEt your balance back and the green water will stay away. Once you can afford a UV, it is great to have.
> ...


Eco and flourite are not soil per se.....and that is really what you need to support plant growth, otherwise keep it in the pots. They just won't shoot runners as they will stay contained. If you keep moving them aroiund, this will be easy until you find a configuration that you like, then change the substrate and plant them out of the pots. I would not use any crappy chemical from Petsmart! a UV would work much better, and it doesn't hurt to have something in your line that kills bacteria, especially in a discus tank. My 2c


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## RachPreach (Jan 16, 2006)

> Originally Posted by Marilyn1998
> RachPreach,
> there is a product by AP called Algae Destroyer. One dose cleared my tank in half an hour. I got it at petsmart, but it is online too.
> 
> Now, that said, I agree to fix the problem. And I agree chemicals do more harm than good. Green water is caused by too much ammonia. And an inbalance of light, ferts, and CO2. GEt your balance back and the green water will stay away. Once you can afford a UV, it is great to have.


Well i thought i did have everything in balance. Although I did start co2 about 2 weeks ago, I have been dosing ferts. 1x weekly at water changes. I would dose more but my lighting isnt very high. Im going to upgrade to about 2.2 wpg soon so then i will start dosing 3x weekly. I have the co2 on a ph controller so I keep the ph at about 6.7 with a kh at 4. I dont know what is out of balance?


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## Lissette (Apr 2, 2005)

The uv did kill the green water. No doubt about that. But the condition for it still existed, so it continued to reappear (after I took the uv off).

Like I said, my ammonia test kit wasn't working. It showed 0 ammonia. I trusted the test kit. Naturally, I did nothing, and looked for other causes. After reading that NH4 is the main cause of green water outbreaks, I decided to buy a new ammonia test kit and it showed that there was ammonia (.25). 

Once I knew how to take care of the problem, the green water went away on its own with no uv. I don't even have it installed on the filter. 



Lissette


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## vidiots (Jun 17, 2006)

Marilyn1998 said:


> Thanks Vidiot. I am leary about putting more chemicals in the water. I took off the lights that were 56w. Now I am running only 130W. Does this help at all? Also, I am limiting the light to the 10 hours you suggested. Today the tank is as bad as my before WC pic from yesterday. ARG! Its been 3 weeks!!


That should help a little.



Marilyn1998 said:


> I tried the Vortex XL, but physically cannot handle that filter. SO, I bought the AA 24W UV internal filter (with own pump)from Petsmart and ran that. I am gonna run it every Friday with the 50% WC.
> THE GREEN WATER IS GONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


UV filters and fine mechanical filters will remove the green water no problem, however if the initial cause was not corrected it will come back. However if you continue to use the UV and the fine filter, you might be ok as far as green water goes, but may have problems with other algaes that pop up to replace it. Like I said before the most likely cause of Green Water is excess ammonia even if it was just a temporary spike that was consumed by the Green Water. Usually it's difficult if not impossible to determine the true cause because of a delayed reation of a few days to a couple weeks between cause and effect especially if you are like most of us and only test when there is a problem unless you are really paying attention.

The temporary spikes are usually caused by something dieing in the tank and not being removed right away, or by something killing a portion of your ammonia oxidizing bacteria colony in your biolicical filter such as antibiotics which is why quarantine tanks are highly recommended (I've skiped that advice and paid for it myself). It doen't have to be a dead fish that causes the spike, any rotting organic matter will do it such as plants or die off of previous algae infestation even one accidental major over feeding. Snail poisons can also do this. If you think you know what caused it, simple just try to avoid it happening again in the future, if not maybe you'll catch it the next time.

The prolonged problems are generally a result of just having too many fish per volume of water. Meaning that you have large amounts of ammonia in the water even if being rapidly reduced by a healthy biological filter and rapidly consumed by plants, it's still readily available to any algae that wants to snatch it away from the other two consumers mentioned. And in this case will often measure as zero ammonia. Another way of looking at it is if you have large amounts of Nitrate being produced even without dosing Nitrate for your plants requiring frequent large water changes just to reduce the Nitrate produced by the fish you have excess ammonia being produced. (I also have skipped this advise, over stocked a tank, thinking I'd make up for it with frequent large water changes, and again paid for it with algae problems)

For a fish only tank, over stocking is a much easier to deal with even if much more work because of cleaning and water changes than a non-overstocked tank. Low light levels, no CO2 injection, and no fertilizers. All you need is frequent large water changes with nutrient deficient wanter and you wont have algae problems. What I mean by nutrient deficient is that it doesn't come from the tap with High levels of stuff already in it and that you are not adding things to the water that provide nutrients such as: PH adjusters, buffers, slime coat, etc. IE the algae needs nutrients to live however most freshwater fish can get by without them in the water column, because they can get them from the food you provide. Just mentioning this fish only part because, I too have tried things that worked in one situation, but failed miserably in another.


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## Lissette (Apr 2, 2005)

Marilyn1998,

Thanks for clarifying that. I guess it would be a lot of trouble with Discus. I'd forgotten that they can be a little rough on plants.


Lissette


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## Marilyn1998 (Mar 8, 2006)

FreshNewby,

I did go and get a UV, and am running it for 24 hours after my weekly WC. So far so good. I need to research HOW to change out the substsrate. What is best for doing this in an established tank? Eco, or flourite? and how do I do it? I have no extra tank to put the fish or plants in. Gonna have to research this.

Rachpreach,
In my case, my green water appeared shortly after I started to dose with Seachem products. I was worried about the nitrates being 0, so I was doing 1 cap per day of Flourish Nitrogen along with 1 cap Flourish and 1 cap excel. Threw in some trace, and some iron and POOF!!!!! GREEN WATER. I know that is what did it. Since then I have been dosing PMMD at 1/8 tsp daily, 2 caps excel daily and 50% WC on 7th day. Running UV 24 hours after WC. It is working great!!! Your addition of CO2 could have brought it on. Hard to say.
All I have read here says to use MORE ferts and not less so the plants can use it and keep algae at bay. 

Lisette,
I agree that test kits are fickle. I have heard that many nitrate tests never show right. Same for ammonia. I use them to monitor my ferts, but I am not relying on them at all, and eventually will only use them if I notice some changes in my tank.

Vidiots,
I have been concerned that my ammonia is showing up between 0 and the next level, not quite hitting the mark. I have had some higher light requirement plants losing alot of leaves and my brown diatom algae has disappeared. This could be the reason of my ammonia spike. No missing fish.
I took out my pots and pulled off all the dead, dying, and otherwise unhealthy leaves. This left my ludwigia peruensis and red temple rather bare but for the top 3-4 inches of the plant. I now have MANY small rosettes of leaves on the lower stems. My water sprite was left with only about 4 leaves and now has so many HUGE leaves in just a week! I guess this is what you call pruning??:smile: 

Could the ammonia rise be due to too many ferts? 
How many fish in my 90 Gallon with all these plants is too much? (please see signature)

Thanks all. This is a GREAT learning thread.


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## Lissette (Apr 2, 2005)

It's possible an ammonia spike is going on.

I'm glad that the uv is working for you. You'll see your water crystal clear in a few days. Mine takes about 2 to 3 days to clear, depending on how bad it is.

Try and narrow down possible causes for the NH4 spikes. Like, sunlight, high No3, ammonia, lights, overfeeding, overdosing, fish load, gravel movement (excessive mulm), root tabs, etc. Anything that might trigger it.

What "vidiots" said makes sense. And you're right about not trusting test kits. I know I learned a valuable lesson from all of this. That's for sure.


Lissette


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## vidiots (Jun 17, 2006)

Marilyn1998 said:


> Vidiots,
> I have been concerned that my ammonia is showing up between 0 and the next level, not quite hitting the mark. I have had some higher light requirement plants losing alot of leaves and my brown diatom algae has disappeared. This could be the reason of my ammonia spike. No missing fish.
> I took out my pots and pulled off all the dead, dying, and otherwise unhealthy leaves. This left my ludwigia peruensis and red temple rather bare but for the top 3-4 inches of the plant. I now have MANY small rosettes of leaves on the lower stems. My water sprite was left with only about 4 leaves and now has so many HUGE leaves in just a week! I guess this is what you call pruning??:smile:
> Could the ammonia rise be due to too many ferts?
> ...


If you are using good aquarium fertilizer it should contain no ammonia, if you are using something like miracle grow it does contain ammonia. Ammonia eventually becomes nitrate, nitrate is safe to add for most fish without causeing problems up to a point. I guess ideally you'd like your nitrate level to be somewhere between 15 and 50 for a planted tank, but you would like less than half of this to come from your fish waste in the form of ammonia.

As for the number of fish that is a little harder to say. It varies with the size of the fish. Think body mass or volume and not just length. The bigger the fish the more waste it produces. The best recommendation I have seen for fish stocking todate was 1 cubic inch of fish per gallon. Less than this would be considered a light fish load, and more than this would be considered a heavy fish load. 100 neon tetras would be a light load in a 90gal tank, but 100 angel fish in the same tank would be a very heavy load. When considering the size of the fish, use the max adult size

The best way of gaging the the load is by the nitrate level. If you do not dose any ammonia, nitrite or nitrate. You can monitor your nitrate level to see if it is increasing or decreasing between water changes with a test kit and figure out the rate of change. Without any plants it would steadily increase over time. However with lots of healthy growing plants and a light fish load it should decrease over time or at very least not increase rapidly. The factors you can control is frequency of water changes, and dosing rate. A tank full of rapidily growing plants can consume up to 4ppm per day of nitrate and ideally you'd like your fish to be producing less than 2ppm per day to reduce algae problems caused by ammonia, and you can make of the difference that your plants need by dosing nitrate.

This is very different from how you would maintain a fish only tank, where ideally you'd want 0ppm nitrate and other nutrients.

If you use Nitrate as your reference, you can figure out how much of the other nutrients to dose.
You'd want to dose Potassium at a rate equal to the nitrate dose.
You'd want to dose Phosphate at a rate of about 1/10th the nitrate dose.
You'd want to dose Iron at a rate of 0.1ppm per day (even if the plants don't consume it, it won't last much longer than a day at this ammount)
You'd want to dose Trace elements as directed (varies depending on the brand).

You may find some fertilizers contain several of these nutrients already mixed together, but I doubt you'll find any that contain all of them because some of them interact with eachother making them useless if mixed.

This is what I like about planted tanks over fish only tanks, it's a completely different and more complex world and I find it fascinating to learn how all of these different setups work, even if at first glance these different techniques seem to contradict eachother.


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## Marilyn1998 (Mar 8, 2006)

Vidiots,

since this thread I have changed my substrate to SoilMaster Select and planted the plants. That was a week ago.

All my plants are growing GREAT, but my swords have pinholes. I add 1/16th tsp of Greg Watsons PMDD and 2 caps of excel per day. On the 7th day, 50% water change. 

_I need to add KNO3 and KH2PO4 I am reading, but how much and how often?_


My new params with the SoilMaster are:
PH 6.8 
Ammonia .25 ( I did a 100% WC on 5 days ago, the substrate change and cleaned the AC110 completely). Left the XP3 alone.
NitrIte 0
NitrAte 30
GH 8
KH 3
Temp 85
Phosphates 5.0
Iron 0

Light is 130W of compact light 6700k/colormax full spectrum for 10 hours on timer.

90G with 8 discus, 12 cardinals, 3 rams, 3 bushynose plecos.


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## vidiots (Jun 17, 2006)

Marilyn1998 said:


> Vidiots,
> since this thread I have changed my substrate to SoilMaster Select and planted the plants. That was a week ago.
> All my plants are growing GREAT, but my swords have pinholes. I add 1/16th tsp of Greg Watsons PMDD and 2 caps of excel per day. On the 7th day, 50% water change.
> 
> ...


Greg Watson's PMDD contains KNO3. 

If I understand the PMDD mix correctly at 1/16 tsp per day for 90 gallons you are currently dosing.
0.6ppm Nitrate per day
1.2ppm Potassium per day
0.06ppm Iron per day
0ppm Phosphate per day

According to Chuck Gadd's list of plant symptoms you are not dosing enough Potassium.

If you are not dosing Phosphate and already have a level of 5.0ppm you may not need to dose that at all. Your Nitrate level is a bit high for the small amount you are dosing with PMDD and the fact that you have detectable ammonia suggest you are getting the majority of your nitrate from ammonia. Since at worst case if all of your Nitrate came from your PMDD doseing and you had no plants or fish and did 50% weekly water changes your maximum build up of Nitrate would be about 8.4ppm Nitrate.

You might try dosing additional K2SO4 or Flourish Potassium to bring up your Potassium Level to match your higher Nitrate and Phosphate levels. A daily dose of about 1/16tsp of K2SO4 or 7.5mL of Flourish Potassium should raise your daily dose of Potassium another 1ppm per day which would result in a max build up if not used at all of 28ppm, which is much closer to your 30ppm Nitrate level. I beleive that I have read that Potassium levels as high as 200ppm Potassium do not cause any problems with algae or fish.
If your plants show improvement you might try upping this dose of Potassium another 1ppm per day.

Another Cheaper and probably better strategy might be to increase your 50% water changes to twice per week instead of once per week and double your daily dose of PMDD mix. This would double your amount of Potassium as well as result in a larger percentage of your Nitrate to come from the PMDD mix instead of from ammonia, and might help to reduce algae problems as well.


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## Marilyn1998 (Mar 8, 2006)

Thanks so much Vidiots!! I had Chuck's page bookmarked, but to the how much of what is in this mixture calc. I didnt know he had other things too!

I am going to try the 2x a wk wc for now, since I have discus. I was worried about the high phosphate range. SO, I dosed today 1/4 tsp KNo3 AND 1/8 tsp KH2PO4. THen I came and read this thread. guess I might see some funky things for a few days since I just upped my nitrates!!! 

I looked at these old pics and my tank today and cant beleive in just a month my swords and repens grew like 4-6 inches! Definitely Potassium deficient tho.


Thanks for all your help!!!


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## vidiots (Jun 17, 2006)

Marilyn1998 said:


> Thanks so much Vidiots!! I had Chuck's page bookmarked, but to the how much of what is in this mixture calc. I didnt know he had other things too!
> 
> I am going to try the 2x a wk wc for now, since I have discus. I was worried about the high phosphate range. SO, I dosed today 1/4 tsp KNo3 AND 1/8 tsp KH2PO4. THen I came and read this thread. guess I might see some funky things for a few days since I just upped my nitrates!!!
> 
> ...


I just looked at Greg Watson's web site that said his PMDD mix was equal parts of the 4 ingredients (Potassium Nitrate [KNO3], Potassium Sulphate [K2PO4], Magnesium Sulphate, CSM+B). You said that you were adding 1/16 tsp daily of the PMDD mix. So I figured that meant that you were adding 1/64 tsp of KNO3 (1/4 of 1/16).

I dose these ingredients seperately, so I made a excel spreadsheet to calculate the amounts of dry powder to add to my 180 gal tank based on the ppm per day I wished to add of various nutrients. I bought a pound of each KNO3, KH2PO4, K2SO4, CSM+B, from Greg Watson unmixed. I just plugged your numbers into my spreadsheet and divided by 2 to come up with your doses for a 90 gal tank.

Another good site I found for helping with the math involved in calculating fertilizer doses is:
http://users.ev1.net/~SPITUCH/Chemicals/chemicals.html

Tom Barr's website gives great dosing directions for tanks with high light and high CO2. The dosing would just be scaled back a little for lower light and no CO2.
http://www.barrreport.com/

I too stuggled at first to get my plants to grow, and was constantly fighting various algae. I think that my initial problems were caused mainly by my trying to keep the nutrient levels as low as possible which I had learned worked best for fish only tanks. I just wasn't feeding the plants enough, once I started feeding the plants more, WOW did they take off, and algae problems pretty much went away.


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