Couple months ago I removed my actinic Zoomed T5 bulbs with ATI. But left Zoomed 10k day bulbs in place. Now nothing has changed or been added to my tank in the past few months except several tiny frags. Filtration is even better now then in the past. Use UNCW water and always have. Have always used bottle water or tap with water conditioner and never had issues.Once a week water changes. All corals have always grown good. Only thing i can figure that is causing the green film on the glass is two different brands of lights mixed?Front glass is where it really grows mainly where the two 10k bulbs are. I have been discussing this with hypnoj and he thinks the lights wouldnt cause this. Just trying to get any other ideas. Thanks.
Question about lights and green algae film on front glass.
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Well 10k,Is full spectrum daylight "White light" for lack of a better term,If you go lower kelvin like 55-65k you would get more of a green,yellow spectrum or kick,If you went higher kelvin than 10k you would have more blue spectrum..If you went up you upped the kelvin so to speak 12-14k,or mixed your tubes,like a 50-50 [6500&03], so to speak that green algae would not grow as fast,It is hard to bet full spectrum "daylight" tube....If you wanted to grow free floating micro algae cultures use 43-55k cool white bulbs,You would notice the same thing with a halide,What the corals and other organisms use to photosynthsis,and what we visually see is two creatures altogether ,We try to come up with a blend to keep each other happy,but what we like to see,causes more algae growth
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Various algae and zooplankton will go through bloom-and-crash cycles in every aquarium, fresh or salt -- that's the nature of biological systems. It's tempting to think (and sales people are glad to support the idea) that these unexplained blooms and crashes are do to something (hardware or water parameter) that needs to be replaced or corrected. But the biological changes we observe are not always a response to some physical change; they may just be a form of ecological succession, like weeds in a field.
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Yes of course, light intensity, photoperiod, or spectrum can tip the balance in favor of nuisance algae versus the photosynthetic things you're trying to grow (good algae, corals, plants). I'm just saying that the intended changes we make, and stuff we add to the water, aren't always the cause of the biological changes we see happening. The biological community in an aquarium is always making its own changes, on top of the things we're intentionally changing. So cause and effect is hard to pin down, and when it looks like some treatment or new piece of equipment "worked" or "didn't work" we really don't know for sure until similar results are seen on other aquariums - preferably several times.
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