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Thread: lights off?

  1. #1

    Join Date
    Feb 2010
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    76

    lights off?

    Went on vacation for 10 days, had the auto feeder droping dry food in for fish 2 x per day. Both scrubbers growing a lot of green for the past cpl months, however, still good amount of algae growing in main display. Came home to a complete outbreak of red/green cyano...and I mean everywhere! My question is, since all my sps and lps are long gong(they all died off over the last 6 months) and only have 6 fish in the tank, can I turn the lights off, or run them only for a short period of time to eliminate all algae growth, and kill off the small amount of aptasia's?

  2. #2

    Join Date
    Apr 2010
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    281

    Re: lights off?

    I did eventually do this after I lost my SPS back in december. It works like a charm, and if you keep it off for 3-4 days the algae will all be gone, however, the amount of shit from your algae will be loose in the water, so skimming and filtration of any kind with gac etc is advisable. The scrubber will take away the bad stuff if the skimmer and gac don't catch it first. The scrubber will do it alone also, but it will take alot more time.

  3. #3
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    Re: lights off?

    Yes you can do this, since your unfortunate tank moving / rock cycling killed anything that needed light. However I would usually tell someone to not do lights-out, since the algae that dies in the display is going to raise nutrients in the water, and this will cause the scrubber to grow darker. Scrubbers grow better and greener with lower nutrients in the water.

  4. #4

    Join Date
    Feb 2010
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    Re: lights off?

    So, after scrubbing for over 7 months now, just about every square inch of my live rock is covered by red cyano algae. The first question everyone will ask is water movement throughout...I have two mp40's + my two return pumps returning the water through 3 sea swirls, so water movement is not an issue. Phos reading on hana meter says .01. Both my screens on two sm100's are growing green and I clean one, then 3 days later the other every 7 days with a huge pile of green algae with each cleaning. I'm sure the first response is going to be that phos is coming out of the rocks, but let's be real here, it's been 7 months now, so I do not think we can use this as an explanation any longer. Besides, red algae is growing on the back of the tank as well, so phos cant be coming out of the glass. I have no live coral left, so I'm only feeding flake food twice a day for the 7 small fish, so overfeeding must be ruled out as well. Any help would be appreciated. I want to rid this algae before transferring the rock into the new tank.

  5. #5
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    Re: lights off?

    If algae is growing on plastic parts like the back of the tank (which are not in the light), then nutrients are certainly high in the water, probably from the dying corals. The more coral mass you had, the more nutrients they are going to put back into the water as they decay. After the polyps are gone, the decay continues on their insides for quite a while. If you are harvesting a lot, like a half pound from each scrubber each time, then it's just a matter of time before the coral decay runs out. At that time the scrubbers will slow down in growth, and the plastic tank parts will clean off, and the coralline will start to grow again.

  6. #6

    Join Date
    Feb 2010
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    Re: lights off?

    the corals were all gone 2 months ago...the only thing alive in the tank for the last two months has been the fish.

  7. #7
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    Re: lights off?

    Well it can't keep going forever; at some point the export will catch up to the import. In my experiments in poisoning, iron overdosing, and overfeeding, it took 6 months to totally fix each one.

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