I have a tank that is shallow and has fairly low lighting. It is a 30 gallon tank that is long (48"), therefore it is only a foot deep. With the rock most of the corals are only a couple of inches from the top.
The tank has 4 48" NO's (2 t-12's and 2 t-8's all 40watt URI bulbs atinic and 50/50). It is not a ton of light, but it is160 watts and the tank is shallow. I have nothing but softies in it and all are doing fairly well, except the Green Star Polyps. I have 4 or 5 frags around the tank. They did well for a while. Then, one at a time, they went "fuzzy". It looks like "purple" hair algae.
I have almost no hair algae in the tank as the cleaning crew and Sally Lightfoot do a fine job.
Question: Is it likely to be the lack of light that is the problem. Water prams are fine and the bio load is extremely low. Cleaning crew and crab are it - No Fish. And there arent that many corals as it is a lightly loaded fragging tank.
BTW, it also has a 20 gallon sump with Macro algae's and reverse lighting. Tank is fairly mature (6 months old). I had a fairly low water flow (just the 250 gph sump return), but I recently poped a couple of power heads in to churn it up a bit.
BTW, I'm not running the skimmer because of the low bio load and newness of the tank (trying to get the coralines seeded first).
I do run Chemi-pure in the sump. There is a pretty good amount of live rock and the tanks and Sump are jampacked full of pods. BTW, if anyone wants to drop a dragonette for a month or two, I could probably fatten it up
Thanks - johnny
The tank has 4 48" NO's (2 t-12's and 2 t-8's all 40watt URI bulbs atinic and 50/50). It is not a ton of light, but it is160 watts and the tank is shallow. I have nothing but softies in it and all are doing fairly well, except the Green Star Polyps. I have 4 or 5 frags around the tank. They did well for a while. Then, one at a time, they went "fuzzy". It looks like "purple" hair algae.
I have almost no hair algae in the tank as the cleaning crew and Sally Lightfoot do a fine job.
Question: Is it likely to be the lack of light that is the problem. Water prams are fine and the bio load is extremely low. Cleaning crew and crab are it - No Fish. And there arent that many corals as it is a lightly loaded fragging tank.
BTW, it also has a 20 gallon sump with Macro algae's and reverse lighting. Tank is fairly mature (6 months old). I had a fairly low water flow (just the 250 gph sump return), but I recently poped a couple of power heads in to churn it up a bit.
BTW, I'm not running the skimmer because of the low bio load and newness of the tank (trying to get the coralines seeded first).
I do run Chemi-pure in the sump. There is a pretty good amount of live rock and the tanks and Sump are jampacked full of pods. BTW, if anyone wants to drop a dragonette for a month or two, I could probably fatten it up

Thanks - johnny