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Thread: Will new bulbs make that much of a difference?

  1. #1
    spideybry's Avatar
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    Will new bulbs make that much of a difference?

    So I have been running my scrubber for about a year now (since april of last year). I usually just feed pellets for my fish and occasionally some cubes of mixed food. I am by no means a heavy feeder and am still running my skimmer on my system as a compliment to the scrubber. Main tank is doing great, no algae on rocks (save for two patches of cyano on my sand which do not want to go away, probably one fish that died and I couldn't find), and colors are great as well. Here is a photo



    My frag tanks are a different story. The one tank is full of algae, and the other is starting to get there. When I say full of algae, it is just the glass that is covered on the bottoms (since they are BB) and a handful of plugs and some hair algae that is growing a bit on the racks. It bothers me -_- I have no algae eaters in those tanks as opposed to my DT (two tangs and 2 Mexican turbos that I have had forever), only other thing I can attribute it to is flow, or lack there of in the frag tanks. Here is where the bulb question sort of comes in.

    Below is the growth I have been having lately on my scrubber. It is a combo of what looks to me like turf, green hair, and a nice yellowy crap that I think is some sort of diatom. I first noticed it on my egg crate racks in my frag tanks which is on the same system. I removed the egg crate and substituted it for acrylic racks. It just so seems that this growth perhaps was due to old bulbs. Thoughts?







    I decided to get a pair of good test kits and test out No3 and Po4. Turned out between 0-.025ppm for No3 and 0.8-.16ppm for Po4. I am debating if this is good or bad considering I have done probably 2 water changes in the life of the tank. Last week I decided to feed like crazy to see if I had any boom in growth in the scrubber, I was feeding 3 cubes a day for 4 days straight. Really didn't notice much of a change in anything in the tank and the scrubber looked the same to me as well (normal growth by my standards). I should have tested my levels to see if there was any change in the No3/Po4 but I didn't. I will probably do that analysis this week and record levels (probably 4 cubes a day and testing respectively).

    Do you think new bulbs will make a difference?

    For those who don't know my system, I have an 83g Display, 2x40g breeders, and a 75g sump. I am running a SM100 scrubber, MSX160 skimmer. Only fish in the system are 2 Lyretail Anthias, 2 Osc. Clowns, 2 Green Chromis, Yellow Coris Wrasse, Sailfin Tang, and a Kole Tang.

  2. #2
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    There are dead spots under the thick algae; cleaning 2 days sooner might help.

  3. #3

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    You didn't mention how old the bulbs you are using are, or how long you're running the scrubber lights for. I think the rule of thumb is 3 months for a spiral CF @ 18 hrs/day.

  4. #4
    spideybry's Avatar
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    Sorry, those bulbs have been on since the scrubber has been on lol. So april of last year. I will have the check the lighting schedule to see. They are T5s btw.

  5. #5

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    I just got around to checking the FAQ and it recommends replacing T5HO every 3 months as well.. So, I imagine you'd see some improvements by replacing the bulbs. A bit anecdotally, I seem to recall seeing data suggesting that there was a substantial fall-off in output from T5HO starting at 3 months, and at 6 months they were at like 80% and a year like 70%. No idea what sort of spectrum shift may or may not happen.

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