I don't know if this true for all of them, but I've heare there are two
types of algae balls.

ones that I'm familiar with comes from a lake in japan.  They grow slowly,
and generally keep the ball shape without much effort.  I think the rolling
motion triggered by the lake water current helps maintaining the shape also.
These can grow to baseball size and still maintain very dense mat of hollow
ball (sort of like a coarse felt texture)

there are others that are grown in a ball shape but is not a true ball algae
(some other algae made to grow into a ball, but not naturally, or somesuch).
these tend to fuzz up and lose shape (collapse).

I've kept a few in the past, and have never been able to maintain the ball
shape.  I don't know if this is because it wasn't a true ball algae or just
didn't have enough rolling motion..  or too much light... or whatever...

the vendor you got it from may have good insights on how to maintain ball
shape.  if you find out the trick, let us know..  I've been curious about it
myself...

linda

"Andre Malenfant"  wrote in message
news:8e1851bd.0301301045.63026ed4{at}posting.google.com...
> Hi! I had a Cladophora ball for a few months now and never had
> trouble. The plant (algae) grew well and seamed to be happy. THe pnly
> problem now is that it started to grow really fast and eratically.
> It's not keeping the ball form anymore. Does someone know a way to
> make it grow round? I'm rolling it by hand once a day but it doesn't
> seem to work!
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