So, my 36bow has been up for a few weeks now. Everybody's healthy (5 Gold Tetras so far), waters ok other than some film on the surface, but I'm running a surface skimmer to get rid of that and doing 25% PWC's daily.
A couple of days ago I noticed some algae on my rocks. No big, so I reduced my lighting by 1.5 hours a day. Next day... whoa! Figured out pretty quick that I forgot that I used to use my fixture for a planted tank. 2x55, 6700k and 5500k PC.
I'm not about to go out and buy a NO fixture because this tank is a budget tank until I get a job. So in the meanwhile, I've replaced one bulb with a 50/50 from an old reeftank and removed the other bulb.
Does this make sense? I figure the actinic bulb will do nothing for the algae, so in essense, I really only have 27.5 watts at 10,000k... right? Plus this bulb has a years use already so the output should be much lower than its rated for.
A couple of days ago I noticed some algae on my rocks. No big, so I reduced my lighting by 1.5 hours a day. Next day... whoa! Figured out pretty quick that I forgot that I used to use my fixture for a planted tank. 2x55, 6700k and 5500k PC.
I'm not about to go out and buy a NO fixture because this tank is a budget tank until I get a job. So in the meanwhile, I've replaced one bulb with a 50/50 from an old reeftank and removed the other bulb.
Does this make sense? I figure the actinic bulb will do nothing for the algae, so in essense, I really only have 27.5 watts at 10,000k... right? Plus this bulb has a years use already so the output should be much lower than its rated for.
