Algae starting up

hey all, i have had some green algae start up in my sand the last couple days.
i tried cutting back the light a little yesterday to see if that would help but it seems worse today.
i have a 20 gallon long tank with a coralife light (1x 65W Coralife 10,000K Daylight, 1x 65W Coralife Actinic Compact Fluorescent Lamp plus two 3/4 watt Lunar Blue-Moon-Glow LEDs)
i checked the water the yesterday and all was good except the nitrate level was slightly elevated but i am thinking it was dude to feeding a little much the day before?

i am new to the hobby and any help would be great! thanks!

 

here are a couple pics of the algae problem.

 

How old are the bulbs? Do you use tap water or RODI water? How many fish are in the tank and how long has the tank been up?

 

i get the water from the LFS i did just have a red mandarin and a sand sifter star, i got the anemone about 5 days ago and yesterday i brought home a psychedelic goby and that larger frogspawn.
the tank is about 6-7 months old now.

 

Increased water flow, weekly water changes, efficient skimming, raise your alkalinity levels(just a bit), and watch your feeding. These should help with algae issues.

 

well it sounds like your parameters are ok.

i had the same prob when i used CF bulbs. What i learned was that as the bulbs get older, they start to deteriorate towards the end of the spectrum that the bad stuff likes. think it's the red side. changing the bulbs fixed it for me. my bulbs were about 10 mos old at the time. no longer using CFs. best of luck!

 

thanks for the info guys, i scooped out the bulk of the algae and cut the lights back to 12 hours of Actinic and 10.5 hours 10000K (in the middle of the Actinic cycle). that seems to have slowed things down, it might be time to start thinking about new bulbs, these ones are at least 6 months old, maybe more like 7.

 

id cut back to 8 hours regular and 10 hours atinic

 

alright, i'll give that a shot.
the little 3/4 watt blue LED night lights shouldn't be an issue right? i haven't been leaving them on just in case.

 

you say you cut it back to 12 hours Actinic and 10 hours for 10 k. how long were they on before that sounds like you lighting cycle might have been to long.