Green water

Definitely don't see a reactor or uv sterilizer in my immediate future so the black out begins tonight. Thanks for all the advice, will update in a few days. Surprised to hear 8 hours only with the lights. I like to enjoy my tank in the evening after work, but will start turning them off earlier......when I turn them on again. Would adding led's for night viewing make a difference with the phyto and or algae?

 

For that very same purpose, I have my lights set to run from 12 - 8 PM.

FWIW, I just added a lunar LED to my tank a week ago, and had to pull the plug on it last night. My problem was that corals that fluoresce under lunar light stopped opening during the day. :-/

 

I keep hearing about putting the lights on timers. Is that difficult to do? Can I pick up timers at the local DIY store?

 

Its literally plug and play, and you can get it from coralife ( i have one that controlls daytime actninic and lunar if i had em.), or home deopt but youll need 2. Running carbon will help with the water situation, but dont get discouraged, your tank is new, and will go thru some major algae phases.

 

Cool, thanks! I;ll check em out tomorrow! I'm running API Bio-chem Zorb in the power filter along with the carbon filter cartridge that goes with the filter, hopefully that helps, but definitely not looking to sink money into a reactor yet!

 

39.99 on BRS BRS GFO and Carbon Reactor - English

Worth every penny. and you can run anything you want in there. i use mine with a maxi 600, the 1200 is overkill i think. I would hardly call that "sinking"

 

No, you're right. I've never looked in to it, just know that everything about this hobby is expensive if you don't spend time looking for the best deal or diy if you can. Thanks for the heads up!

 

As for light timers, if your fixture doesn't have it (them) built-in, yes the $10 timer from Wal-Mart or a local hardware store will work just fine.

 

water changes and plenty of them, black outs, shorten up the photo period to 8 hours or so, check your phosphate levels and make sure your ammonia, nitrate/nitrite levels are in safe zones, try lowering the temp a little slowly and remain in safe parameters(algae loves warm water), run carbon and make sure you have a bioload that is appropriate for the tank (too many fish and no matter what you do you will always have algae), maintain plenty of circulation throughout the tank (algae will grow in stagnant or slow moving water) and skim skim skim! (skimmers are better than any type of canister or HOB filter at removing organic material and disolved organic material (the cause of algae) and of course have a FEW cerith or astrea snails (not to many or they will clean the tank then starve and die) get some nasssarius snails to stir the sand bed and more live rock the better.

 

I've got two light fixtures and picked up a timer at HD today that will handle two. I'll be uncovering tomorrow after about 72 hours of total blackout. Keep your fingers crossed for me!