Lighting Schedule???

[~firefly~]

Ok, thanks. I'm just hyper-aware that my wattage per gallon is low and I have a few plants with higher light requirements than I can give them. It's a pain...my tank (Interpet Fish Pod 120) doesn't allow any other lights other than the ones I have.

[Gogi]

I used to run 12 hour lighting on my shrimp tank and got a nasty algae bloom, green, brown, black brush algea. You name it, I got it. Anyways I cut lighting to 10 hours and have managed to keep the brown and green algae from coming back. The black brush algea is still present but is no longer advancing. That batle is a stale mate but I can deal with it.

How long have you had your tank running? My shrimp tank was running 2 month on the 12 hour schedule before the algae invasion started. IMOE 10 hours is the magic #. It also depend the intensity of the light you use.

[~firefly~]

Low intesity (1 watt per gallon).

Has been running for around 3 months on that schedule.

[Lady Hobbs]

If you have regular stock hood lights, it doesn't matter if they are on 20 hours a day, it will not be enough light to grow plants. All you will get is diatoms. Plants need the lumens to grow and stock lights on 8 hours or 20 hours does not increase lumens.

Leaving lights on longer because they are not good plant lights will not help, in other words.

[~firefly~]

Ho hum...what to do then. Nothing I suppose because my hands are tied! I'll drop it to 10 hours and see if anything changes (although I don't have an algae problem at the moment anyway). I haven't managed to kill any of the plants yet.