Do I ditch the MH?

[cjbaker]

I've had my tank running over a year with no problems. I thought I'd upgrade the standard hood with 4 CP lights built in for a new lighting fixture with 2 x 150w MH. major GHA problems ever since!!
I know every will reply with must be too many nutrients, over feeding, more PWC. My nitrates have always been around the 10 mark, 0 tds with RO/DI used for pwc and I only feed every other day.
Everything was fine with the compacts. Is it all about balance??
When everything was matched as new i.e lights, filter type, tank size, I never had a problem.
Do you think my filtration isn't coping with the extra growth that the MH produce? It's just a wet/dry filter, no fudge or anything fancy.
I've been through 25kg of salt with PWC in 4 months trying to kill this. Do I give in and put the old hood back on ditching the MH?? I didn't have this problem when using the compacts.

 

[ccCapt]

It's all about the amount of nutrients in the water and the amount of light needed for algae to grow and get out of control. You increased your lighting which is now enough for the algae to thrive. Do you run carbon to help remove the excessive nutrients and do you run GFO (granluar ferric oxide) to remove phosphates?
Obviously many, many people use MH's and don't have algae problems.

 

[Schism]

I've had my tank running over a year with no problems. I thought I'd upgrade the standard hood with 4 CP lights built in for a new lighting fixture with 2 x 150w MH. major GHA problems ever since!!
I know every will reply with must be too many nutrients, over feeding, more PWC. My nitrates have always been around the 10 mark, 0 tds with RO/DI used for pwc and I only feed every other day.
Everything was fine with the compacts. Is it all about balance??
When everything was matched as new i.e lights, filter type, tank size, I never had a problem.
Do you think my filtration isn't coping with the extra growth that the MH produce? It's just a wet/dry filter, no fudge or anything fancy.
I've been through 25kg of salt with PWC in 4 months trying to kill this. Do I give in and put the old hood back on ditching the MH?? I didn't have this problem when using the compacts.

Im sorry but the problem is not the lighting, only way it would be is if they are old bulbs or wrong color temp.

You still have nutrients so algae will and can grow. It only takes a small amount of nitrate and phosphate. Whats your phosphates at?

 

[cjbaker]

Hi guys, thanks for you replies. Not I don't use GFO at the moment. For carbon I have a pillow and a carbon pad in the filter system which are about ready for renewal.
Phosphates are showing 0.25 @ the moment.
I think my next step is to replace the carbon and look for a phos reactor, do you agree?

Would cheap bulbs cause any problems? The unit came with 14000k bulbs, I don't see any flash naming on them. Are "bulbs" bulbs and it doesn't really matter?
As you can see from the pics I've lifted the lights 24" to try out a bit of light thinking that was the problem.

At least I now know I haven't wasted my cash on the lighting and i need to keep battling on. This had been so frustrating!!

 

[Schism]

Yep gfo would be a great idea. .25 is enough to cause problems.

Next step after the gfo is the hard part. Manual removal of all algae through scrubbing and siphoning