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How many hours of lighting?

F

fantom555

How many hours of lighting do I need in my tank? I have been growing a lot of algae lately, but might just be bacuase my tank is still somewhat new. I have the 24 gallon nanocube DX with 2 36 watt PCs. I have 3 fish 2 shrimp and a whole lotta corals, that include shrooms, xenia, candy canes, rics, lots of zoas, acans, and some other things. I dose the tank with phyto and trace elements once a week.

-kyle
 
V

vangvace

How old are the bulbs? PCs typically only have a useful life of around 6 months. Also what is the rest of your feeding schedule look like?
 
F

fantom555

Brand New bulbs the came with the cube about a month ago. I also have 8 big nerite snails I believe they are. Just put in 2 fat turbos today.
 
S

Scottyrock

thats alot of coral for a new tank dude.. i did the same thing and its a crash waiting to happen. same thing happened in my 24 dx with the hair, it will burn itself out in about 6 months of good tank upkeep. do yourself a favor and get a better intake pump for your filter if you havent done so, and only use whatever chemicals (chemipure pro,carbon,phosban....)and some floss in your chambers.. also get rid of those stock jbj sponges!
 
M

mnat

Officer Emeritus
Staff member
Moderator
I run my 12g lights for about 10-12 hours, about a normal daylight cycle.
 
F

fantom555

Scotty what type of intake do you suggest? The flow seems pretty good stock, but then again I have never seen anything stronger on one. Also, my filtration includes a sponge in the first chamber with floss basically wrapped in chemi pure. second chamber is just a sponge and the heat probe, third has pump heater in it. I am currently dealing with electrical problems with the tank until the new hood comes from jbj so I have to manually turn the tank on and off and forget sometimes leaving it on for over 10 hours, I am going to cut it to 8 or 9. Also..when you say you feed 1 or 2 nights a week, is that the fish you feed or the corals with phyto etc? I feed them every night a little flake, but the with a clown wrasse and blenny with 2 shrimp..everythign gets devoured asap.
 
S

Scottyrock

na feed your fish that much... in my 1st chamber i put down egg crate half way. on top of the crate is chemipure. on top of that is a pura pad, on top of that (all the way up top) is a 100 micron filter pad. the stock sponges are no good (in my opinion) because to get themn out to clean them you have to compress them a bit, and all the stuff goes into your chambers.. my second chamber has eggcrate w/ carbon....thats all. as far as the pump goes i used a rio 1700 (runs hot).... try for something about 500 or so g.p.h.. rio works but the last thing you need with one of those is a heater.
 
J

jettie1767

Scotty,

What kind of eggcrate and where can I get them? New to the hobby and I've been reading people using some sort of eggcrate in the chamber. I'm assuming it's not the ones that are cardboard or styro from real eggs sold in the supermarket?

Sorry for the ignorance!

Thanks.

Warren
 
S

Scottyrock

jettie
you can get it at home depot, it is actually for recessed florescent lighting. i have some if ya need it, instead of buyin a huge sheet of it
 
A

Audi0s

Damn Scotty 500 gph? I went with a maxi 900 and a koralia nano in my disply, things seem to be working fine. You gots da crazy flo' boy!
 
S

Scottyrock

Audi0s said:
Damn Scotty 500 gph? I went with a maxi 900 and a koralia nano in my disply, things seem to be working fine. You gots da crazy flo' boy!
Click to expand...
HAHA...YEAH THERES A TON OF FLOW. I ALSO HAD A KORALIA 2 IN THE DISPLAY BUT GOT RID OF THAT...BUT NOW I HAVE 2 ZOOMED POWERSWEEPS. GUESS ITS ALOT OF FLOW, BUT I ALSO HAVE ABOUT 40 LBS OF ROCK IN A 24 GALLON TANK SO WANTED ALOT OF CIRCULATION TO KEEP TO POO FROM BUILDING UP
 
M

Mbodell

I don't think I would be dosing the phyto weekly unless you are very conservative. Too much in a small system can be really bad.
 
1

1201139

i have a timer on my light and i just set it according to the sunrise and sunset on weather.com for our area. so its more like the actual seasons and plus the temp changes a couple degrees in my tank with the season too. ;D
 
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