Lighting upgrade - now algae problem

[deichkorn]

Hi there. I decided to try real plants in my aquarium (46 gallon). I quickly learned that the stock hood that came with the tank 10 years ago wasn’t going to cut it. My local aquarium store sold me this fixture, AquaticLife LLC | Premium Marine Aquarium Products. One catch, they didn’t have the freshwater version in the size I needed so they sold me the marine version with the blue lamp. They said the fixture would work the same only the blue light would have a different visual affect vs. the two regular blubs. It looked weird for a bit but my wife says she likes it so I guess I’m going to leave it be.


The plants I added are Mexican oak leaf. They’re nice – tall and fill the back very well. They seem to be doing well except the entire tank is suddenly covered in algae – probably because of the new intense lighting. There’s so much, the pleco isn’t keeping up with it – I may have to get another. (The new fixture has been running for about a week)



Questions… 1. Thoughts about using the marine bulb in this fixture? Should I replace it with a second bulb to match the non marine bulb in the fixture? 2. Will the algae bloom continue at this rate or will it slow eventually once the tank is used to the light? 3. How many hours should the lighting cycle last? I’m running 10 hours now – too much? Not enough?

I’m excited about this site – thanks everyone in advance for your help.

 

[BigJim]

1. If you're not injecting CO2, the marine bulb AKA the actinic bulb is doing you a favor. Plants don't use light in that blue spectrum. If you had two normal bulbs, you'd have a worse algae problem.

2. The algae bloom will continue until you figure out what your nutrient imbalance is and correct it.

3. Your new light is pretty powerful and light counts as a nutrient for plants. Try cutting back to 6-8 hours and see if things improve.

 

[ChizerBunoi]

That's excellent advice that BigJim provided.

Worse case, you change the blue actinic bulb to a 6700K daylight bulb. The algae gets 10x worse and turns into the nasty black beard algae. You end up adding co2 and fertilizers to keep up. Now your in the highlight tech department with everyone else. Your happy but your pocket isn't. lol

Right now its just brown diatom algae but that will slowly change to green spot, and then evolve from there. Sort of a mini cycle gone bad if you don't care of the light/co2/fertilizer balance. Do some more reading on this topic.

Start right here.
http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f24/read-this-first-resources-and-references-83826.html