No light for 4 months?!

[JasonG1]

Hi all. I just set up my new tank and am trying to follow the guidance of leaving the lights off for the first 4 months. However…it’s really hard! Can I run my AI Prime 16 at 1% during the day and 5% moonlight at night without risking algae growth? It would be great to have a tiny bit of light to see the fish as the tank doesn’t get much ambient light in its location. My hope is that super low light won’t be enough for algae growth, but I don’t know. Thanks!

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

you can turn your lights on whenever you want. I always turn them on right away, no fun to look at a dark tank. Especially if you mention there is poor ambient light, not healthy for the fish to be in the dark all the time.

Doesn't matter how long you leave the lights off for, when you turn them on, algae will grow, it cannot be avoided.

The 'lights off' idea is that less algae will grow, since biodiversity has time to cover the rocks and counter the algae growth somewhat, and it works somewhat, but it cannot be totally avoided.

 

[Bruttall]

Water + Light = Algae. This is an irrefutable fact of Aquarium Keeping. My understanding and approach to Salt is that instead of changing Light Cycle/Duration/Intensity to combat Algae growth I use livestock. Snails, Crabs, Stars, the types of fish I stock, etc. All based on benefit to Tank and Utility for algae management.

Does it work? Well, so far so good, but I'll get back to you when my tank is a year old, instead of 4 months old! But as of now for a Clean Up Crew I have approximately 340 snails (Nassarius vibex, Nerites, Astrea, Dwarf Cerith, Florida Cerith, Trochus, Dwarf Trochus, Mexican Turbo, Bumble Bee, and Zigzag Periwinkles) + 2 conch snails about 3 inches long. Sand Sifting Star and a Slug in there someplace.

Fish I have two spot kole tang, naso tang, vampire tang, sailfin tang, diamond watchman goby, pygmy cherub angel, neon dottyback, royal gramma and a pair of ocellarus clowns.


300g dt

 

[Garf]

Hi all. I just set up my new tank and am trying to follow the guidance of leaving the lights off for the first 4 months. However…it’s really hard! Can I run my AI Prime 16 at 1% during the day and 5% moonlight at night without risking algae growth? It would be great to have a tiny bit of light to see the fish as the tank doesn’t get much ambient light in its location. My hope is that super low light won’t be enough for algae growth, but I don’t know. Thanks!

Yep, go for it.

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

I'm not a big fan of leaving the lights off for 4 full months. First of all it kiss your enthusiasm and excitement but honestly I think you just need to accept that there will be some algal growth no matter what. Personally, i feel maximizing biodiversity with real ocean live rock works a lot better anyway. Also, instead of trying to evade unwanted algal growth, I think learning to manage it is something you can learn from because you'll face many different outbreaks of all sorts of pests and unwanted organisms over time and having the experience to deal with them properly is valuable imo.

 

[Boehmtown]

I'm more of a fan of extremely low light. After a month for a few months. It gets everything that was gonna grow to grow very slowly so you can have cleanup crew keep it under control

 

[CoastalTownLayabout]

It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing choice. Your AI Prime is programmable and allows you to ramp up light energy as your new system matures. You can do this over a four month period. Same timeframe, less grief.

Start at low intensity and build up slowly from there, matching quantity of herbivorous CUC to emerging algal growth.

Managing algae is much easier than battling it.