LED's and Glossostigma.

[O2surplus]

UPDATE: The Glossostigma continues to grow at an extreme rate under the Led lighting. So quickly, in fact, that it got away from me and grew out of control, forcing me to uproot and remove 2/3 of it from the tank. It got that way because the tank never seemed to stabilize and continually produced s new type of algae,one after another. I tried to fight the algae in the early stages but found that it was easier to just let them run their course and let the tank stabilize on it's own. After nearly 6 months of routine weekly water changes and careful monitoring of various water parameters the Algae curse has almost subsided. I use the word "almost" because I now am the proud owner the worst outbreak of BLACK BRUSH ALGAE that I've ever had! In the coming weeks I plan to mechanically remove as much of the BBA as possible without disturbing the tank water parameters too much, and see if conditions improve. I've already added 6 more siamese flying foxes to bolster the ranks of my ALGAE attack squad and my colonies of RED cherry/ red Crystal shrimp are reproducing new recruits. Here are a few photos of what the tank looks like now.







I am also experimenting with another led set up that looks promising for plant growth. It's a single Bridgelux LED array that is rated for 5,000 lumens from a single die. I mounted it to an all copper computer server heatsink w/ integral cooling fan. I mounted it under the hood temporarily for testing. If my testing of this Led array proves acceptable, I will install 6 to 8 of them into my old CURRENT power compact light fixture and run that on another tank. Check this out-

 

[jcardona1]

Good stuff! Just curious, you ever tested your light at the substrate with a PAR meter? I'm pretty sure you have overkill on the lighting, which could be giving you the algae troubles. Most "high-light" tanks are only running 50-60 PAR at the substrate, my tank had about 40-50 and all the plants grew fine.

Those LEDs are awesome, but I think you may be running too many. Have you tried turning off a few of them?

 

[O2surplus]

Good stuff! Just curious, you ever tested your light at the substrate with a PAR meter? I'm pretty sure you have overkill on the lighting, which could be giving you the algae troubles. Most "high-light" tanks are only running 50-60 PAR at the substrate, my tank had about 40-50 and all the plants grew fine.

Those LEDs are awesome, but I think you may be running too many. Have you tried turning off a few of them?

You're probably right! I've never taken any PAR measurements with the LED system in place. That's something I should do just to have numbers to work with. The weird part of this particular algae battle has been the appearance, as time progressed, of many species that I thought were low light lovers. E.G. "red algae" that only grew in shadow along the back wall, and "brown diatoms". Later came "green algae" that over grew the "red" and so on. I knew that there was an imbalance in the system somewhere, but never really considered too much light. The human eye must be easily fooled as to the relative brightness of different light sources. I will probably start with shortening the photoperiod of the lighting from 10 to 7 hours per day, and see if that helps. Call me but I am now addicted to both "pearling" and "shimmer", and I won't dim my lighting without an intervention first. Thanks Jcardona for your words of wisdom, I'll grab a PAR meter and report back with the #'s.

 

[ITHURTZ]

 

[spirofucci]

Wow! beautiful!!!

 

[O2surplus]

Well time for another update. To start with, all my algae problems are GONE. The Black Brush Algae was the last enemy to deal with, and I murdered it. I found a really effective way to kill that stuff immediately. It literally fell off my plants and driftwood within 2 days. I removed all of my affected plants and driftwood from the tank and, using a spray bottle, misted everything with household ammonia- straight up, no diluting. I let everything soak for about 2 minutes or until the black brush algae turned from black to red. I then rinsed everything thoroughly before returning the plants and driftwood to my tank. I didn't worry too much about poisoning my tank, as my tanks Ph normally hovers around 6.0. Any remaining ammonia would convert to ammonium and be consumed by the plants. The whole process worked out very well with no losses to my plants or livestock. I still have a few areas to treat but the remaining BBA has remained static, and is not spreading.



Here's a few photos of what things look like now.