Too Much light?

[petzerman]

I have a 30 gallon tank with a tek light t5 system, 6 bulbs. Is that too much light? I keep getting alot of algae on the glass and on the sand.

if its not the light what can i do to prevent this algae from growing?

 

[James77]

Reduce the nutrients in the tank. Do you test nitrate and phosphate? Are you using RODI water? Do you feed heavily, do you run a good skimmer?

 

[petzerman]

i buy saltwater from the fish store and i feed twice a day, and i have a remora protein skimmer. i use test strips and they look good.

how many times a week should i do water changes? i do them once a week should i do more than that?

 

[mg426]

If you have algae you have nutrient issues. Test strips are far from the best for accurate info. Then again even the better kits can read zero for nitrates and PO4. This is due to algae using the excess nutrients as fast as it is being introduced into ones tank. James 77 has some very good suggestions.

 

[why_drift]

if your tank is still quite new then it will probably just sort itself out, as long as you are not over feeding or using poor quality water, i used nothing but good quality ro/di water and still got algea for a few months after setting up. that was with very little feeding and always rinsing food.

 

[petzerman]

so its just a part of the cycle? i have had my tank for about 3 months.

 

[petzerman]

how long will it take to go away?

 

[petzerman]

how do i reduce the nutrient? is there something i can buy?

 

[crvz]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13905205#post13905205 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by petzerman
how do i reduce the nutrient? is there something i can buy?

Nope, it's all in husbandry. Good skimming, siphoning detritus/wastes that collect in the tank, and (in your case, particularly) considerably less feeding. 2 times a day seems excessive, I imagine you're greatly over-feeding the tank. What fish do you have in there?

 

[petzerman]

i have 2 percula clowns and 3 damsals

 

[texhorns98]

Agreed you're probably overfeeding. What are you feeding, and how much? You can see my list of livestock and I feed two cubes of frozen food every other day, with a half sheet of nori pretty much kept in there all the time for snacking.

 

[Simon68]

I have 2 clowns, a blenny, royal gramma and flasher wrasse and I feed them a pinch of food once a day, they eat it all in less than 5 min and they are all happy and thriving. Maybe try cutting down to once a day?

 

[cczarnik]

No guarantee that the LFS water is perfect either. I once had an algae bloom in a container of RODI that I filled at the LFS. Looked like a weak phyto culture.

 

[FranktheTankTx]

To answer the orginal question - the TEK light is fine. I'm assumming the lights are in good condition.

The other posters have given you good advice - the amount of food you are feeding set off an alarm in my head. I feed 3x per week. Trust me, fish find ways to feed off of your reef if you provide them with LR (and especially a refugium). You should look into cutting down on feeding.

There's so many unknowns here - what type of water are you using? I don't trust anyone's water unless I make it myself and test it, or if I test someone elses. 0 TDS.

You don't have to have algae problems at all, period. My newest tank - 54g corner is 10 or 11 weeks old now. I have had absolutely no algae break outs besides a little (and I mean little) diatoms. Of course, I do not run lights for the first 2 weeks. I then begin running lights only for 2 or 3 hours per day. Lights aren't needed, and during a tank's first weeks or month, lighting only fuels algae growth while nutrients are at their highest.

 

[petzerman]

should i cut down my lighting as well? i keep them on 8 hours a day.

 

[petzerman]

i feed them flakes, omega one marine flakes