Hey mate! Currently I've reduced it to only 1 hour a day, before that it was only 3 hours. I have 1 Giesemann Super Actinic and 1 Actinic Blue on for 12 hours then 2 Aquablue Corals on for 7 1/2 hours.How long are you running the MH's? I've found 3 hours to be plenty in mine due to the shallow depth. I also started with dry rock and have the same algae on the sand bed. I thought it may have been from one T5 bulb I tried, and have since switched it back to a blue+. I plan to chart PAR readings and have the meter, just lazy. I love the minimalistic rock approach with plenty of fish swimming area. Looks fantastic!
Your PAR map would be interesting to see, definitely post that if you do it. What bulb combo are you running?
Thanks for the kind words about the scape, hopefully one day it will look like what I have pictured in my head! haha
The algae on the sand bed is still persisting, but not only that I have a crazy amount of short brown algae appear which i think is just diatoms. I'm starting to think the rock needs a lot longer to mature than i had thought. I have a low bioload with just the 4 fish and went through a decent cycle before adding them but the re-occurrence of the diatoms and the fact corals aren't doing well I think tells me things aren't ready biologically.