Algae and bacteria growth/Nicrew lighting

[SlicVic]

Hi Everyone! Well, I have been fighting LG and some kind of brownish reddish slimy bacteria in my one reef aquarium for a year! Finally being fed up with it I turned out the lights for the last couple weeks totally! It is disappearing off the live rock and even the coral substrate! It's still on the filter in wave makers but everywhere else is getting clear. I just want to know how to set my lights up so it doesn't come back. I have a night crew set up that you can have it ramp up and ramp down and it has different settings for different percentages of white light and blue light. Does anybody know what I should have the percentages at to keep the algae and bacteria growth down. I have no Corals in there right now because of it!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Hi Everyone! Well, I have been fighting LG and some kind of brownish reddish slimy bacteria in my one reef aquarium for a year!

What is LG?

The brownish reddish might by cyano, or might be dinos (much worse) or even a mix of the two. Treatments are different.

 

[dvgyfresh]

Pics would help , and I don’t subscribe to turning off lights , as the tank will need them on with corals , so try to get rid of it with the lights on

 

[bushdoc]

Some pics would help.
If you don’t have corals and only fish and inverts you can set up your light on lowest possible percentage which would illuminate your tank for viewing and than figure out if nutrients are too high , too low or imbalanced.

 

[Seansea]

Get an algae scrubber pronto. Will clear all that mess up.

 

[bushdoc]

Key to resolving your issue is diagnosing it first, so you know what you treat as bacterial bloom is treated differently than cyano and cyano is treated differently than dinoflaggelates. So I encourage you to you to post some pics and parameters like Nitrate and phosphates especially.

 

[SlicVic]

What is LG?

The brownish reddish might by cyano, or might be dinos (much worse) or even a mix of the two. Treatments are different.

Hahaha! Was supposed to say Algae!