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Lighting


tootie

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I would like to grow algae on the rocks for tropheus fry to eat.

Anyone got any idea what is the best lighting for a 2 x 18 x18 fish tank that will help grow algae?

Any advice appreciated.

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Hi tootie

A tank outside in the sunlight would take a few weeks and some green water is good from that tank .

Neil

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If you don't want to do it outside then use a growlux type of light in a shallow tank.

You could have a small separate tank with smooth round large rocks for growing algae on to swap into tropheus tank once culture is grown.

Insulate tank and keep at 27'c.

Get some pure nitrogen granules fertilizer from bunnings and add a few pinches in every four or so days.

You can really accelerate growth like this.

Placing the tank near a window helps a little as well.

And maybe have the smallest of all air pumps you can find running a air stone in it.

Put light on timer to turn off for 4 hours in middle of the night.

Otherwise plastic bunnings tubs out in sun using the nitrogen fertilizer trick,,, bit slower unheated in winter.

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Thanks for your help.

The option I was hoping for is to get a type of light for the top of the tank that continues to encourage algae to grow.

Is there such a thing?

If not will try one of the other methods.

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Any light will grow algae to a certain extent. Most fish tank lights at least claim to try to ballance light output in order to least promote alge growth while still either being nice to look at or grow plants well - it's debatable how effective this really is.

Marine folk used to do a filter called an algae turf scrubber that was a big lot of algae you ran very shallow water over, they don't seem to be so popular these days, there at least used to be lights avaliable for this purpose that would claim to be better at growing algae. Possibly the effectiveness of these lights growing algae was more to do wth keeping them on 24/7 that any difference in spectrum output. There may have been other names arround for this sort of filter.

Personally I think your best bet is as much light as possible for as long as possible to grow algae. Any plant grow lights are probaly going to be slightly more effective than lights intended for viewing fish. Don't put your lights on 24/6 though: the fish will get a bit crazy being kept up all night. You would probally find you could fairly easily overdo it and get too much algae growth.

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Thanks for your help.

The option I was hoping for is to get a type of light for the top of the tank that continues to encourage algae to grow.

Is there such a thing?

If not will try one of the other methods.

As I said the grow lux fluorescent globe added will help (grow is in grow,,, growlux).
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