No Lights for a Week! Insight? Anyone?

So two days ago I ordered a new lighting system (Aquaticlife T5 HO 48") to replace my very old florescent lighting. A day after I ordered my new lights, my florescent light fixture broke and now my aquarium has no lights and will not have lights for about a week until the new lights come in via UPS. Now I'm worried that things will start to die in my tank and pollute the water with the lack of UV goodness. I don't have any corals, but I do have some purpled up live rock and lots of green algae and hair algae in my tank. Anyone know if I should brace myself for an aquarium melt down? Or will the lack of lighting not phase the tank?

 

Your algae will die off; at least, a decent portion of it, if not most of it. That's not really something to worry about, as bacteria should be able to pick up the slack.

Other than that, I wouldn't worry too much. I might move a regular light fixture (read: lamp) over near the tank and put it on a timer, to keep the fish from possibly freaking out over no lights for many days, and to keep them on a rhythm.

 

This might be what you need if you have a whole lot of algae.

 

Ditto,with no corals and alot of algea,lights out for a week is a good thing,it won't harm your coralline for that amount of time either.

 

Your tank is in a great place for this to happen. The algae will hopefully die off and you don't need to worry about corals.

 

Yep, don't be concerned at all, lights out will take care off all if not, most of ur nuisance algae and the coraline would be okay.

 

Oh wow, that is really good to hear then. Thanks guys, I can rest at ease now.

 

absolutely no worries! I had sps/clams/lps etc and I turned my lights off for 10 days for dino! Absolutely no problems. With no corals you dont even have to worry about reaclimating the light.

 

When you think about it there are storms in the ocean that last for weeks and everything in that part of the ocean gets little or no light during those times.

 

So I just set up my light yesterday and something strange is happening in my live sand.. There has to be some sort of biological reaction to the new lights within the sand because it is producing A LOT of small bubbles. Anyone know what kind of gas is being produced? and what is causing this?