Im Lost

Hello,

Its been a while since I was last here. While I was gone a few things happened. I failed to take advantage of the stealth heater recall early, thinking mine was fine. Boy was I wrong, 95 degree water and 2000$ of live stock later I received my new visi-therm in the mail. I decided to change my lights from a 20k 250 MH to 6 10 watt 20k leds for the second round. ALGAE! I have never had algae problems in salt water before but it is growing at an insane rate. No fish, no corals, RO/DI water and oceanic salt. I have removed all the rocks with algae on them and put in a bucket with salt water and a lid. How long do I have to leave them in there to kill the algae? Is there anything else I need to do?

 

If you can answer a couple questions it will help us;

1. Do you have a clean up crew? if so, what?

2. What are your nitraet/phosphate levels?

3. How long do you have your lights on each day? Can you give more details on your fixture?

a couple of recommendations without knowing these items would be to cut down on the amount of time you have the lights on, put some macro algae in your fuge/sump (if you have one), cut down on feeding/possible nitrate sources, run bio-bellets/carbo or GFO, do more water changes (check nitrates in the water before adding, just to be sure) and get some algae eating devices. Remember, algae happens!

 

devices= inverts

 

The lights are on for 12 hrs. Details of the fixture 6 10 watt leds as stated before. Have not tested nitrates. Clean up crew, few hundred nerite snails. What I am asking is not how to stop the algae in the aquarium; I removed the live rock and put it in a bucket of salt water with a lid = no light. The question I am asking is how long do I need to leave the rock in the bucket w no light for the algae to die?

 

It depends on the algae. You will kill the bacteria over time unless there is flow. This would probably do more damage then the algae. In my opinion, 12 hours of led light is too much. The info on your lights is still not sufficient. Who manufactured it? What type of LEDS were used? Are they dimmable, if so, how high are they turned on? What color spectrums are covered? I would check these items out before nuking your tank

 

Color Temperature: 19500K
Led chips: EPILEDS EP-B3838B-A3

PAR reading(Instrument: Apogee MQ-200): 190
DC Forward Voltage (VF): 10-12V DC
DC Forward Current (IF): 1000mA MAX
Viewing Angle: 120 Degree
Intensity Luminous (Iv): 800LM


This is the info for (1) led, there are 6. They are at full power, cooled by 6 Intel i7 copper core processor heat sinks. powered by (2) 30 watt led drivers.

 

* I made the fixture

 

hmmm, I am not familiar with that LED. Is it a made for aquarium LED? Do you know what color spectrum it his ie. 605-640 nm?

I know some lighting tends to grow algae MUCH better then others. Most people who buy lights from Home Depot for example, tend to get more algae growth then others. A side note, they tend to grow less coral as well

 

The Manufacturers data sheet they sent me is for the wrong LED so I do not know the appropriate wavelength. I sent a msg to find out for sure. Anyways, these leds are very bright, brighter than my prev 250 mh set up. I had 3 corals survive the disaster and they were almost dead until I hooked these lights up. Within 1 day the polyps have fully extended and the color is coming back on my zoas. The corals are responding to the lights very well. The tank was without light for 2 months, during that time ambient light from a window induced algae growth. now I just want it gone. I was thinking maybe coraline growth will kill the algae when it starts to come back in a few months?

 

Epileds Technologies, Inc.

445-475 nm via the pdf on their website