A Conundrum, what to Do?

mony97

Member
I have been reading up on and researching hair algae issues for the better half of a day now and have found some great advice and some solid stand by's (i.e mexican turbos, tiger cowrie, water changes etc).. After all of this I came to the question of okay, well what to do with my lighting schedule..
Many people have said to cut the amount of time your lights are on, or cut them completely.. Before reading all of this I did cut my lighting, only running my actinics from 11am to 12pm so about 11hrs worth a day for 1 month, but no daytime lights. This seemed to help some but have now realized with no daytime lights running the good algae (coralline, and other bacteria needed for natural filtration) also does not have a change to grow.
So here's the question if I run my daytime lights the hair algae may start to spread again and grow more rapidly, but with out them nothing will grow, so what should I do?
Also I have been doing a very strict weekly water change of about 10 to 15% have begun to feed less and set my skimmer to run a little more on the wet side, to curb any additional fuel for HA growth. I am just wondering on the lighting?
Stats:
- 65g FOWLR up and running for almost a year
- 2 Ocellaris Clowns, Flame Hawk, Twospot Hogfish
- 10g Sump with vertex skimmer
- Feeding PE Mysis, and Robs Food, once a day or every other to help slow the algae growth
- 40lbs LS and 60lbs of LR
- One Koralia #2 along with one Koralia #3
- CUC is about 6 Turbos (don't believe they are of the mexican variety) and 13 Nass. 4 of which are the large Fancy Nass.
- Use RO for top offs, and Reef crystals salt.
 

slice

Active Member
FWIW
I've had a small issue with HA the past few weeks. I've been very careful with rinsing my frozen food with RO, feeding less, skimming wet, etc...
Last Friday, my wife on a whim, while at the LFS for water, bought 2 Mex Turbo Snails (the big ones ~2" across, shells look like another piece of LR in the tank, mouths look like a cross between a front-end loader and a street sweeper),
They don't clean the rock of HA, they scour the rock. They leave nothing behind except coralline . At this rate, I think they will be able to keep the HA down to minimal levels; they have completely cleaned half the tank in 4 days.
 
J

jstdv8

Guest
you don't need to shut off your lights completley or not run your daytime lights, just less of them.
BTW 11 am to 12 PM is 13 hours (or 1 hour ) lol
 
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