When do you have your lights on?

[Itsadeepbluesea]

My lights are on late morning into the evening

 

[jclyde13]

Unless your home all day that's a waste of electricity. Mine are turned on at 5pm and off at 11pm on the weekdays and on the weekends they are on at 3 and off at 11

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For the past couple days, I've left the light off until it starts to get dark outside, just for the heck of it (the tank's surrounded on 3 sides by windows, so there's plenty of natural light), but now I've got a serious brown algae bloom (the water is a brown-red color), so I won't be doing that again. And for the record, I did a 60% water change on Wednesday afternoon, so it's not a water quality issue.

 

[chris_zx2]

Everywhere I have read that brown algae is caused by not enough light, however, I get it on the side of my tank with more light...very strange.

 

[jclyde13]

Everywhere I have read that brown algae is caused by not enough light, however, I get it on the side of my tank with more light...very strange.

Have you checked your water parameters? My current 10 gallon is the only well-lit tank in which I've had brown algae, but it only grows on the side of the tank that is in the shadow of the in-tank filter.

 

[chris_zx2]

I haven't checked kh or gh but everything else is 0 except nitrates 0-5 ppm. You have a good point about shadowing, I'm gonna try some new configurations with the lights to see if it changes anything.

 

[perok]

brown algae can also be lights that need changing.

for green algae. Less hours of light, less food....and get an algae strike force in place. I have 3 plecos, an odwalla catfish and a flying fox.

I'm fine with 9 hours for mostly low, medium light plants at 2w per g. In fact, that might even be too much light by the books, but they don't seem to mind.

 

[Slippery K]

I onlyhave 4 Amazon sword plants left in mine, my rck destroyed everything else. I keep my lights on a timer for 6 hours a day (from 4 to 10), but his tank also gets natural sunlight from morning to mid after noon.

 

[chris_zx2]

Added more lights to the tank and co2, now the brown algae is gone and the green has started.
If I remember correctly this indicates I need more ferts right?

 

[Black Jack]

off at 2am on at 10am