Lighting time to rid algea

[Scotty Fraiser]

Have a110 gall reef. Struggling with hair algea. Maxspect p series led lights. Strong skimmer. Using ro water. Think I was over feeding. Pwc every other week of 25 gall. Will start weekly of 15 gall. Do have corals and want to go dark for a while. How long can I leave the lights off and not hurt the corals. My lights are on the automatic setting and I am not sure howto shorten the span of the automatic setting. Love the lights but the settings and directions can be complicated.

 

[willbratz]

Going dark for hair algae won't do to much for ya. If you had cyano you could do 3 /4 days will no ill effects. Hair algae you might wanna pull out and scrub what you can out. Also how long are your lights running?

 

[Scotty Fraiser]

They are on the auto setting. Which means they come on slowly starting about 8 am. It is 8.45 pm now and there is only a blue glow in the tank. Lights are sweet I'm just not smart enough to customize them. They peak from three to four in the afternoon. Not real sure how to answer that question. Some may say that's 12 hrs but they start slow and taper slow.

 

[willbratz]

Well I can tell you from my experience I run my metal halides for 6.5 hours +/- with blues coming on 1 hour before and 1 hour after the halides go off. I run my moons about 3 hours after that before it goes dark for the night. I was running my lights for far to long. Once I cut my lighting down, pulled my rock and scrubbed it and added an algae blenny, my hair algae had been receeding the last month or so. I'm also getting ready to fire up a second Phosban that I'll be running GFO IN. My other Phosban runs nitrate killers.

 

[Scotty Fraiser]

I'm running Gfo and phosguard in the same reactor! Hope that is ok. Could not find any info on mixing media in the same reactor. Nothing like learning from experience!

 

[willbratz]

I asked that same question. It might be better to run them separately... If they have different flow rate requirements.