Since my new lighting in my 46BF!!

[sharrison]

Since I have added two 250 watt 14k Ham with Icecap I am having a mega problem with nusience alage growth. My live rock used to be pretty and purple and now the little green monsters have taken over.
My water parms look good PH 8.2 cal 425
all the bad stuff is at zero.
I run the lights from 6:00 A.M. until 11:00 P.M.

[dwculp]

500W of MH light over a 46 gallon tank is quite a bit, about 10.9W of MH per gallon. That isnt excessive but is quite a bit.

Your lighting period of 17 hours a day is way too much lighting though. You could cut it down to 12 hours a day, from 6am to 6pm or even shorter.

[sharrison]

Ill try that. its odd though I run the same ammount of time on other tanks and I dont have this problem.
I am highly confused. maybe if I put about 20 more snails in there?

[MrPike]

That is way to long of a lighting period for your tank. You may get away with that kind of lighting if your not using metal halide on your other systems.

What kind of algae seems to be dominant right now?

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

The brighter the lighting, the more you may have to focus on keeping nutrients low to prevent problem algae. These articles may help keep nutrients low, especially phosphate:

Phosphate and the Reef Aquarium
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-09/rhf/index.php

Nitrate in the Reef Aquarium
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issu...t2003/chem.htm

Iron Oxide Hydroxide (GFO) Phosphate Binders
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-11/rhf/index.htm

[sharrison]

Ill post a picture of it here in a few mins. i jsut home from work.

[sharrison]

Pretty rock with my NO 46 Watt.

Pretty rock with only one 250 Watt MH one week after I had it up.

Yuckie rock after having the 2nd 250 watt MH for anohter week.


Maybe ill put 500 snails in there muhahaha. I guess they would never go hungry, thats for sure. My tang seems to be loving it.

[sharrison]

oops the second picture is inccorrect. it should be this one. Sorry about that

[sharrison]

My phosphate's have to be
low.

All my param's are good as gold.
I guess I'm over looking something here.

[phishy2]

i think your lucky it looks like that.

i replaced my 250 watt XM 15k bulb for a 14k pheonix bulb which has a much better rating, and i have cyno and a really thick type of hair algae all over. ive pulled the rocks out and pulled it all off a couple times now, and it still comes back, ive been running phosban in a biowheel filter to no avail. the cyno has finally died down alot after a few weeks but the thick hair algae is rediculous

[sharrison]

Ok I think I know whats going on. The only new addition that I have done to the tank is stating to vary my fish diet. So in doing this I thought I would pickup a premium flake food. As one of the articles that you gave me alink to mentioned "Flake Food". This wouls explain why this out break happened not after the first week but after the 2nd. I bought the flake food a week after buying the first MH and setting it up. OMgoodness you are a genius. Thank yall for your help. To confim this I will stop feeding them this "Flake Food" and do a few water changes over the next week and see what happens.

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

My phosphate's have to be
low.

If phosphate was low enough to limit availability to algae, you wouldn't likely have green algae growing. If you have rapidly growing algae, you may not be able to detect the phosphate with a kit for the simple reason that the algae is sucking it up as fast as it arrives. That is the reason that macroalgae growth can drops phosphate to undetectable levels, and yet still get plenty to grow rapidly.