FishProfiles.com Message Forums

Hey folks,
I set up a 29 gallon reef tank about 4 weeks ago. It has 20 pounds of live rock. It is lit with a Coralife 96 watt compact fluorescent with a 10,000k and actinic bulb. I have a Bak Pak 2r+ skimmer, a whisper 40, and a maxijet 600 powerhead. Parameters are as follows, ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate <5 ppm, alkalinity, 3.03 meq/l, s.g. 1.025. The actinics come on at 8:30 am, the full spectrum bulb at 9:30 am. The full spectrum goes off at 8:30 pm, and the actinics at 9:30 pm. It has 3 green chromis (each less than an inch) added for initial cycle. There are 4 snails and 10 hermits. I've recently added 1 green star polyps and a zooanthid rock. The last couple of days green algae has really started to cover the front glass. It grows so fast that I can wipe the glass down or scrape it, and 4 hours later the glass has a fresh coating of green algae. The water itself looks clean. Should I shorten the light cycle, or will this harm the corals that are in the tank? Is this a normal algal occurence, or should I take other measures?

Really your tank is still a new tank. I'd expect to go through some algae phases still. The more slowly you stock the tank, the less algae you will see, but you can do water changes and run some carbon and phosguard to help things out until your tank matures a bit more.

Oh and read this.

---

Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients