Sand Movement

[phil-uk]

Hi i have a bad case of cyno algae, i have had it for about 3 weeks but it seems to be gettin worse. dry.gif

Ive got twin 150 watt halides with 4 54w suppliment actinics and a 36 watt T8 tube to help with the dawn and dusk and 6 LED,s as monlights.

Moonlights on 10:00
T8 on 10:30
T5s on 11:00
Halides on 11:30
Halides off 10:30
T5s off 11:00
T8 of 11:30
and moonlights stay on until 01:00


I have 50times turnover, water params perfect and 25 cerith snails. I have read that cyno algae can fix free nitrogen so water qauaity params is not always the problem. wacko.gifMy nitrate and phosphates are 0 i do 20%water change weekly and the tank has been running 3 months since live rock.

I hoped it would go like the hair alage i had but no!


I think that if i had some more sand sifters this may help.hopefully!

What do you guys and girls think that would be suitable, i have looked at the following;

Sand sifting starfish,
Fighting conch(dont know much about these i thought they were preds)
More snail,(cerith or nasssirus Sp)
Sea cucumber(heard bad stories about these)

Please could you give me your opinion on these critters and other advice aswell

Cheers Phil thanx.gif

[zimreef]

I'd say definitely your lights are on for too long - 11 hours under halides will give you problems in a new tank IMO. Take the halides down to around 6 hours per day (and accordingly decrease the time the other lights are on too) and then gradually increase the lighting (perhaps 0.25 to 0.5 hours per week) until you reach a point where algae growth becomes apparent.

My last tank reached this balance at around 7.5 hours a day although a lot of people run their lights for a lot longer than this with no problems. I think it depends on each individual tank.

HTH

John