Algae on glass

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Philip.Cloete

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I need some help concerning algue on my glass, I have to clean the glass about 2 times a day and that sucks its quite a new tank being running for 4 months now its a dust like algue and comes off pretty easy but is really bad on the eye.I am not overfeeding I feed slowly so all food gets eaten all parameters are fine, the only thing I am concerned about is my lights I am running a 400w MH for 8 hours a day beacuse of bad advice given by a lfs and bad research I got an anemone which is doing verry well under the light, so I cant really afford to keep the light off.I dont have a phosphate test kit so cant do any tests on that at this moment

any advice would be appriciated..
 
I would suggest you get a phosphate test kit I had the same problem a while ago and found out it was phosphates, after adding phosgaurd it has cleared up.
That 400w light is really strong it could be the part of the problem how big is the tank?
 
It is normal for a new tank specially with such a strong light but that still seems a bit hectic.
Do you rinse your food before feeding, that was my problem.
You need to have patience with the algae in the beggining it calms down as the tank matures.
I would recommend phosgaurd anyway.
What are the other parameters and what filteration do you have?
 
Im still quite new to this myself, but I would really suggest you test the phosphates.
 
Some algae is to be expected in a young system. Big tank that! I would reduce the photoperiod on the halide, as natural sunlight is not at its most intense all day long. Age and colour spectrum of the globe could also contribute to algae growth, although not sure if it is even algae if it is only on your glass. Could be diatoms.
If you think that's annoying, wait till you have to start scraping coralline off daily to see ur inmates...
I would not bother with a po4 test kit, unless you buy at the top end of the market. Rather invest in preventative measures such as gfo, gfh, etc.
 
Rinse food with ro water.
 
Take note that only frozen foods need to be defrosted in RO water. And it is algae, not algue :p
 
herkie said:
I totally agree with Chicca, a scrubber does wonders for me and it is cheap to keep running.
Click to expand...

Cheap and the more "natural" route to reef keeping ... Keep It Simple Solution (KISS) :smooch:
 
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Check what the kelvin rating of the 400w lamp is. Anything under 12 000K will cause algae. I changed my lamps and it has make an unbeleivable diffirence.
 
ok so I am planning this whole scrubber thing only prob sofar is getting hold of plastick canvas and space in the sump according to what I have read the screen for a 1000 litre tank should be 1metre square (is that correct) if that is the case I would never get it to fit under the sump and dont want a bucket or watever standing next to the tank the whole time, Any suggestions?
 
Philip.Cloete said:
Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

Dont think about the square meter-what about a scrubber as long as your sump with say a 300mm high screen to have the scrubber fit under the tank. Look at SantaMonica's threads he has some interesting designs.. I have just built a new scrubber that is growing algae like crazy and the screen dimensions are only about 600x 230.
 
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