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Re: Subject: Yikes! Too much light?
You are right. You have too much light - for the current environment
in your tank. You have not provided enough information to try
and make a judgement on the problem in your tank.
If you look at how bright natural light is compared to how bright your tank is,
you will find that your tank does not compare. It is fairly obvious
that you can have an effective tank with the amount of light that you
have.
I have a few questions for you:
Do you inject CO2? The more light that your tanks have, the more
important CO2 is.
What types of plants do you have in your tank? Until you are able to
find a balance in your tank, you may want to find some very fast
growing plants to take up excess nutrients in your water.
Have you tested your water? Your nitrates should be low, but not 0.
I suspect that you are OK here. Generally phosphates should be as low
as posible. A couple of large water chages should do the trick --
unless that water that you are adding is high if phospates. Iron
should also not be high. I find that as long as my tanks show some
iron, I am OK.
I also have not found a compelling arguement to light my tanks more
than 10 hours. After about 10 hours, plants start closing up and
stop producing bubbles. 14 hours, even with only 2 bulbs is too
long.
- Darrell
> Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 17:57:47 EST
> From: Il KiNGS <IlKiNGS at aol_com>
> Subject: Yikes! Too much light?
>
> I have been struggling to gather up anough money for 4 40-watt bulbs over a
> 75-gallon tank. Finally, last week I got enough to go buy 1 more single strip
> light and one double-tube strip light(1 stip light was included with the tank)
> plus 2 Plen-Plex Ultra Tri-Lux blulbs and 2 GE Chroma 50's. This makes for
> 160 watts over my tank and roughly 2 watts/gallon which is what I have seen
> recommended. The first few days were great. All the brown algae and blue
> green algae that had been terrorizing my tank suddenly disappeared. Then one
> day I noticed the water looked a bit cloudy. It has been getting cloudier and
> cloudier every day since. Now the water looks like a miniature lagoon(green
> water). There isn't any significant algae growths.....just the green water.
> The tank is lit for 10 hours on a combination of 2 bulbs and 14 hours with the
> other two. So why is this happening? I do weekly water changes and add
> FloraPride by Tetra. The tank recieves little, if any, natural sunlight.
> This is really frustrating me and any help is greatly appreciated.pH = 6.8
> hardness = 150 ppm
>
> Thanks,
> Fishboy