How long do I keep lights on?

I have a 12G nano cube, I pretty much turn the flourescents on when I go to work (7am) and turn off and turn on night light at about 8PM. There is some pretty thick LHA on the back wall and on the LR. Does anyone suggest how long I should keep the Flourescents on for the coral?

 

Well... My suggestions would be 10 for daylight and 9 for actinic bulbs.

 

I run my actinics 12 all for 7. But I have a 180 lit with T5s. Small tanks can have nutrient issues get out of hand faster, hence the algae.

How often do you do w/c's?

 

I run 10 hours on whites with an hour either side for actinics - to give the dawn dusk feel for the inhabitants, so they never get plunged into to much light or to much darkness to quickly

as the doc is indicating above, nutrients will have a major role to play in any algae issues
if you can keep on top of them, then 12 hours of daylight per day should not be a problem

Steve

 

I do water changes every two weeks and take out about 2-3 gallons. Its a 12G tank but only holds about 9 gallons of water. Do you think that is sufficient?

 

Its more than enough IMO in terms of percentage - your changing up to 30% of your water every other week

its your parameters that you need to keep in mind, maybe you could get away with changing 1 gallon each week, or 2 gallons every 2 weeks

maybe 10% every other week would be OK , so 1 gallon


Steve