Upgrading an existing ATS

[rhdoug]

I have an 11yr old heavily stocked mixed reef, 58 gallons. The system currently has 4 fish. A little over a year ago, I removed my skimmer and implemented a 10.5" wide x 10"h screen made from plastic gutter guard, lit on one side with a 23w CFL bulb. The ATS is in the sump where the skimmer was. The tank seemed happy for the most of the first year, but over the last few months, the tank has been experiencing some rather significant algae growth and several of the corals are clearly not as happy as they should be. I did discover that the bulb needed replacing (which I did this week) as the screen had turned brown since the last scraping. The nitrates are running higher than I'd like, testing around 25 with a Salifert kit. I do not test phosphate.

I bought some canvas screen and will be picking up a new light for the other side this afternoon, and hope to have the new screen implemented this weekend. I hate to take all of the filtration away from the tank by removing the exsting screen all at once. Should I use perhaps 1/2 of the old screen fastened to the new one until I get some algae growing on the new screen?

Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome.

Thanks

[SantaMonica]

Yes the bulb needs replacing every 3 months.

Just swap out the whole thing at once. Cut the feeding down for a few weeks, and things should be good.

[rhdoug]

Thanks for the quick reply. In addition to adding a second light, I also got "bigger lights". My existing one bulb is a 100 w equivalent 23w CFL. I just picked up 2 150w equivalent 42w bulbs (soft white). Hopefully that and the addition of the second light will help get things back on track.