Actinic lighting and algae

I have been getting some unwelcome algae in my tank recently and am going to cut back on the amount of time my 10,000K lights are on. Unless it is a problem I will leave my actinic lights on for the same amount of time as usual. My question is does or will actinic lighting aide the growth of algae?

Thanks,
John

 

What type of algae?
While lighting can help, it is alone not responsible for algae. You need to look at water chemistry more than lights IMHO for a lot of the nuisance algae problems. Your most likely having poblems with nitrates, phosphates, and/or silicates.

 

I agree with pack leader, but also, algae mainly feeds on the red spectrum of light, the bluer the light, the less food they will produce and it will eventually die out. I just switched bulbs from two 12,000k and two actinics to two 15,000K and two actincs and noticed a minor cyno problem has gone away without me doing anything else differently.

 

It’s hair algae, came with a frag I had recently gotten. I’m aware of the water chemistry concerns. My phosphates are under .25 and nitrate is under 10 I haven’t checked my silicates lately but last I checked they were 0. The hair algae is confined to a small spot and does not seem to spreading. I’m more concerned with light right now and will get the water fixed later.

John

 

What kind of cleaning crew do you have?
What size tank?....and what kind of flow? I just eliminated a red slime issue by adding another power head and up'd my ph..its gone now.
IMO...you must deal with lighting, flow and water params at the same time..one does effect the other.
Better responses will come if you include some stats of your system...size, filtration, LR, sand, habitants etc. : )
Hope I helped...K+ to ya!
Pictures pictures : ) lol
LG

 

Your phosphates are high, should be below .05. I would suggest getting a phosphate reactor with some good GFO/GFH media.

But on your question on the lights, the actinic do not provide much light for the algae, so cutting back the time on your 10,000k bulbs might help.

Kim

 

I have a Biocube 14 (3 month old) with stock pump/flow. Because the tank is so small to begin with I don’t want to clutter it up with and additional pump. The lighting is one 24 watt 10,000K and one 24 watt actinic.
I too suspected flow and the algae is in a low flow area, but the bottom line is algae needs light and nutrients to survive. And yes I will deal with all at of the issues at the same time, just want to get the lighting first.
The cleaners are four astera , one bumble bee snails and five blue legged hermits.
I’m just curious if I lessen the time I have the 10,000 K (usually 11 hrs) on and leave the actinic on for my usual amount of time (14 hrs.) will the actinic provide an environment for the algae to flourish, stay the same, or lessen.
Hair algae is what made me throw in the towel back in the 80’s with 55 gal. so that stuff brings back bad memories. Oh I also run Evil Ozone too, left over piece of equipment from the first go round. But I just got an ozone test kit and have been tweeking the level for a week or so.


Thanks,
John

 

I would suggest cutting your total light period back to around 10 to 12 hours total. The algae does better with a longer light.

Turning off the 10,000k bulbs will decrease the amount of light available for photosynthesis for both corals and unwanted algae. Now if your corals are getting enough light it should help with the algae, but it is hard to say to be honest.

I would get some gfo/gfh and put it in a sock in one of the media compartments to help bring down the phosphate even more. Nano tanks can be a pain to keep algae under control since you can't add much for herbivores to the tank, and you don't normally have a skimmer either....

Ozone. Are you running some type of an ozone reactor?

 

I have a skimmer and the ozone generator is and old Sanders unit.

 

I don't think I have ever seen anybody with a 14 gallon tank that ran Ozone....

Kim