Can you leave your lights off for more than 1 day?

[Anonymous]

Ok, today I'm leaving the lights off (battling green hair algea

.

Can I leave them off for 2 days to try and starve the GHA, or would this be too stressful on the clams, sps, and softies?

I just did a 25% WC, pulled as much out GHA as possible, I'm running a magnum 350 with the water polisher. I'm going to keep doing this routine every 2 or 3 days until this stuff is gone.

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[SteveP]

One day shouldn't be a problem. Two days might be pushing it for the clam since its zooxanthellae use light as its primary food source.

If you've manually removed as much GHA as possible, your grazing snails (namely turbos) should mow most of it down. Place the snails right on the GHA. You cna also cut back on your feeding to reduce available nutrients.

Steve
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[Anonymous]

SteveP- Ok, If I put the clams in the refugium and adjust the photoperiod of the refugium, could I then leave the lights off for another day? Do you think the SPS, LPS, and softies could handle another day in the dark?

10-4 on cutting down on the feeding, I've already done that.

Thanks!
Louey

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[Anonymous]

Your corals will be fine for a lot longer than just 2 days without lights (sometimes it's cloudy in nature too). If you get closer to 2 weeks without lights, I'd start to worry about them.

Some quick points on killing the lights to kill algae:
1. If you don't get rid of the nutrients that are supporting the algae, it will come back. Guaranteed.
2. Turning off the lights will knock the wind out of an algae problem for a few weeks--your snails and other cleanup dudes may get hungry, so it's a good idea to feed them during this time.

Ty

 

[Anonymous]

I had a light problem at the same time I was having the algae problem and lack of lighting didn't really affect the algae.

Drip kalk, get a blue tux urchin, harvest and it will go away.

 

[louey louey]

Tangirl-I just started using bionic for calcium and alk. Levels are easily maintained. It's just a 75G tank. Would Kalk really help? Seems like I read that the blue tuxedo urchins strip the rock including coraline. Is this true? Are there any other downside to tuxedo's?

Thanks for all the relpies. Hey, it's time to do another WC! YEHAW

 

[Anonymous]

My rocks have never had coraline. Don't know why. People that do have coraline and a blue tux say that he strips it down (small amounts) and it grows right back full force.

Kalk combines with the phossphates in the water. Do a search on it, I don't know the formulas and what not, but it worked for me.

I was having a terrible hair algae problem, I began dripping kalk and a week or so later the algae was looking pretty bad. A month or 2 later it was gone.

Blue tux urchins are small so they don't move rocks and make a mess. Their spines are short so they don't hurt and they are pretty. I have seen some ugly ones though. I got mine from Premium Aquatics for around $15.

I love mine - he's so cute. He camouflages himself with all kinds of weird stuff - from algae

to hermits. Sometimes I'll come home and find a hermit strapped to his back - little red legs flailing around

Mine's a 75g as well, btw.

If you want to talk about kalk dripping, do a search. If you can't find our threads about out do it yourself stuff, let us know and we'll help you out.

[ February 26, 2002: Message edited by: tangirl ]</p>