how much light please .

[bigmel]

Hi all

My tank is what you guys call low tech , vallis at the back ,amazon swords centre and xmas / java moss .

Its been up and running for 6 weeks with good plant growth and seems to be ticking over nicely ..

I have the lights on 8 am to 11.00 pm which i understand is considered way to much . The books i read years ago used to quote 10-12 hours .

What lighting time length is considered to be best please...

Tank is a fluval roma 240 .

 

[bigmel]

Bump !

I,ve reduced lighting to 6 hours but still getting hair algae and considering dumping all the plants which is ashame as it looked the mutts nuts

 

[darren636]

any pictures? What filtration do you have and do you feed the plants? also is your tank t8 or t5 lights?

 

[ian_m]

I,ve reduced lighting to 6 hours but still getting hair algae and considering dumping all the plants which is ashame as it looked the mutts nuts

I accidentally "algae'ised" my tank by miss setting the lighting time clock (confusion over am pm ) and in conjunction with the CO2 injection not matching the lights produced a major algae problem, hair algae on most plants, BBA on rocks as well as long stringy (staghorn ?) algae. The cause was only noticed by me a week or two later when I was around on the Sunday and noticed the tank lights were on during the day, . Had noticed algae in the tank during the intervening time but assumed it would just go with the 6 hours lights I was using NOT!!!!

I cured by
- Setting the lighting time clock correctly for 6 hours a day. I have 2 hours in the morning, basically so I can check & look at the tank before I go to work, followed by 4 hours in the evening.
- Set the CO2 on 2 hours before light on and off 1 hour before light off.
- Double dosed Excel Flourish.
- Scraped/rubbed as much algae off the plants/fixtures as possible. I used a piece of filter floss as a cleaing/wiping cloth.
- After cleaning and allowing tank to clear either rinsed or replaced the fine filter floss in the filters which was now saturated with algae and plant bits.

After a couple of days, virtually all the aglae had gone and so far has not come back. Did have some plants die off and melt, but this is a known problem with using high doses of Excel. As soon as I stopped using Excel what was left of the melted plants sprung back to life. Main plant casualty was "ye olde" cheapy Egeria Densa I was using to "pad" the tank whilst the other plants settled in.