refugium lights on 24/7 ?

[murtle]

How many hours should I keep my lights on in my algae refugium

 

[Qwiv]

Depends on the algea you are growing. Caulpera uses 24/7 light. All the others 12 on 12 off works best.

 

[TekCat]

24/7 is totally acceptable. In case if you have caulerpa macro in your fuge 24/7 lights help to keep it from going sexual (good thing).

Some run lights on a reverse cycle (opposed to lighting on main tank) to offset pH drop during night hours.

 

[sir_dudeguy]

you dont want the caulerpra to go sexual cuz it will rot and cause problems...so if you got that, then go 24/7.

But for stuff like chaeto (my favorite one) run it on opposite schedules as the main tank.

Algae in the main tank sucks up nutrients (nitrates/phosphates) during the day...then at night it will release them back into the tank and may even appear to be fading/dieing...but then they suck them back up in the morning.

Chaeto only takes up nutrients when the lights are on...well it'd take some while they're off i'm sure, but not that much...however the chaeto wont release the nutrients back into the water at night.

So when you turn the tank light off, turn the fuge light ON. The algae in the tank will realease most of its nutrients after the lights go out...and since you've just turned the fuge light on, the chaeto will then take up those nutrients that were just released by the algae in the tank.

If you were to run the chaeto on 24/7 schedules, its not gonna hurt anything, but most of the nutrients are already in the algae in the tank so theres not much for it to take up, meaning its not really gonna outcompete the tank algae. Also, if you're running the bulb 24/7 its gonna burn out twice as fast, and imo, you dont really need to run it all the time for chaeto, so why burn out the bulb faster? Save your money for something else

 

[murtle]

sorry for being such a noob but can someone post some pictures so that i can identify the different algae

 

[kau_cinta_ku]

diff. alage pics.

 

[murtle]

Many Thanks