kill the lights kill the algea.....Kill the anemone?

[jonathan]

I recently got a bit of this brown slim algae in my tank from a LFS. It has not become a problem but has the potential. I want to get ride of it but don’t want to hurt my anemones. The alga reacts in that when the lights go out it goes away and when they are on it comes back. Can I turn my lights out for a few days to kill the algae and continue to feed the anemones silver sides or what have you or will they loss there symbiotic bacteria. Any suggestions on how to get it out would be great.

 

[jacob_poly]

kill the algae by killing the root cause for the algae. Excess dissolved nutrients are a major cause. Also silicates and phosphates from different sources. Eliminate these to get the problem by the root. Also growing macroalgae like caulpera and the likes help signifcantly with algae control. I think a couple of days is fine for your anemone, but longer than that might be bad. I might dim lights rather than stop lighting altogether. But when you have your lights back the algae is going to return...

 

[schadiest1]

what kind of lights are you running? if you have actinics, i would leave them off for 2 or 3 days but continue to run 10K's. Algae mainly feeds of the actinics from my research on this topic.

 

[tuna dan]

Very true my tank is overrun with algea then some1 suggested killing the anctics and that seems to slow the growth of it.

 

[palumbo]

Looks like diatoms. Usually this will clear up (slowly but surely) when the tank is more established and once silicates in the sand is used up or taken out. Many times it's just a waiting game for this stuff to vanish, but you can also add a phosphate/silicate sponge in your filter. Something like Seagel, or a mat that HBH makes. There are a lot of options. Good luck to you.