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View Full Version : light cycle


jc
Tue, 17th Mar 2009, 07:51 PM
I'm looking to fight back some hair algae and cyano in my tank. What light cycle would you all recommend to help kill off these algaes. Right now my light are on 11 hours. I really want to get aggressive with this. I've started to dose Algaefix and double up on my GFO. What would be the minimum I could go to keep my corals alive. Half the lights are on from 10 to 9 and the other half from 11 to 9:30.
Texreefer
Tue, 17th Mar 2009, 08:02 PM
I would not go any less than 8hrs on the lighting.. concentrate on nitrate and phosphate removal, make sure you are doing steady water changes and siphon out what you can will doing them. also try and get your ORP up a bit
gjuarez
Tue, 17th Mar 2009, 10:50 PM
What bulbs are you running? How old are they? ANother possibility is that your bulbs shifted sprectrums. However, if your tank is high on nutrients focus on that first. Mexican turbos for the hair algae, more flow for the cyano are temporary fixes
jc
Tue, 17th Mar 2009, 11:03 PM
Bulbs are about 6 months old. I'm changing them out soon. I did add mexican turbos and a sea hare. Nitrates are near zero. My phospate kit is unrealiable so I'm just going to keep changing the gfo in my reactor every 2 weeks.
jc
Tue, 17th Mar 2009, 11:03 PM
How high should my orp be?
JimD
Tue, 17th Mar 2009, 11:20 PM
Adding any kind of clean up crew is useless without proper export. You're still gonna have the buildup of nutrients as the snails poop out the algae. You made no mention of a skimmer/refugium/sandbed or water changes... I think 11 hours is too much, cut back to 10, then 8 and see what happens.
jc
Tue, 17th Mar 2009, 11:49 PM
I have a g2 skimmer with a meshwheel sedra 5000 that runs all the time, yet pulls out very little scum. Probably because I feed very little. I have a fuge with a piece of cheato that is 1' x 1' x 6" deep and 5 small mangroves. I do about 30 gallons water changes once a month with r/o water. My water is 20 ppm last I checked. I plan on getting some DI resin soon. No dsb.
JimD
Wed, 18th Mar 2009, 12:05 AM
20 tds is quite a bit in my opinion. I change my filters at 3. Lessen your exposure, get some new filters and see what happens, DI is really the kicker, it will bring your TDS to zero., Thats what you want.