To clean or not to clean??

Hi All,
I have a new 90g tank that has a sand bed (not live) and about 25kg of live rock (yes, I will be adding more, about another 50kg). The tank is currently just being cycled and is at the stage where Ammonia is 0, Nitrites are 1mg/L which has dropped from 5mg/L over the last couple of days. Nitrates are down to 25mg/L which has dropped from >100mg/L over the last couple of days as well. KH is 10 and phosphates are 0 with pH at 8.3 and SG is 1.023

I now have a stack of diatoms and green hair-like algae and patches of crimson covering the glass. My question is, do I clean the glass or leave it there for later when I add fish (is going to be a FOWLR tank) and snails? I can't help thinking that if I clean it off I will also be disturbing all of the little 'pods that are currently living all over the glass.

Any suggestions?

Sandie

 

Sandie, to make your aquarium viewing more pleasurable I would clean the glass. It sounds as though you will have enough algae for the snails. A happy medium might be to leave on panel un-cleaned.

I am in the same boat as you, when I clean my back heaters and pumps I have to remove many sponges and pods and I feel a little bad.

 

there should be enough critters living else where in the tank that if you clean the front and sides it won't matter.

I actually wouldn't have lights on it while cycles at all though.

 

Would having lights on during cycle slow down/affect the cycle negatively?

I was considering running mine just for looks when I start my new 125g, so it's not as boring looking.

 

After the first week I started running my lights for 4 hrs/day, increasing by an hour or 2 a week until it was stocked. Reason was to try and avoid too much algae build up.

Also, as far as cleaning off the pods, scraping the glass (even using a mag float) will have no affect on the pods. They will move away. However if you have significant amounts of hair algae, you will lose some that stay in the algae when removed. Either way, I would not worry about them.