3.5 days with lights out...

[44santababy]

I was battling cyano and other algea pretty bad for my first time and water changes, gfo, carbon, feeding once a day and finally limiting my lights time and nothing worked. I decided on monday at 7pm...LIGHTS OUT until 7am friday morning. My lights came on today and my tank was beautiful. The rocks looked brand new, sand was white, corals looked better then ever, clam was happy and wide open. Only negative thing was my yellow tang got pop-eye in one eye which is healing already. My eel was all over the place because it was dark all the time, cool for me to watch. My fish slept for incredible amounts of time. Its almost like a reset button. I will continue this practice once a month. just wanted to share...cant wait to get home to stare at my new algea free tank.

 

[CHEMCHEF]

I hope your algae is not back when you get home. If not it probably will be in the next few days.
Lights out is a temp. fix.
sounds like phosphates are high.

 

[PHILYD1]

I have done that with the same results, it works wonders.. That leads me to belive the fact that we over light our tanks

 

[kidninja]

ahh shoulda done before and after pics!!!

 

[44santababy]

my tank was not to bad at all but cyano was starting to spread and i couldnt control it with water changes and so on...another forum suggested the idea and i tried it...i actually liked the way my corals reacted to the non light for long periods of time. I can honesty say my corals liked the lights off time. My fish were very skeptical the whole time but that is understandable...

 

[44santababy]

just a note...zero SPS in my tank

 

[rebelson]

Did you perform a water change after the lights came back on?

 

[44santababy]

i am tonight when i get home, i changed my filter socks daily while doing this and skimmed wet the whole time. Also ran a large amount of gfo/carbon which i did from the start of the tank.

 

[rambler67]

keep us updated if it comes back or not i know a lot of people have tried the same thing just to have the algae come back.

 

[44santababy]

even if the algea does come back, hope it doesnt, i will still cut the lights for only 2 days a month just to mimic a storm enviroment. My lps corals really seemed happy with the lack of light for a period of time. My kenya tree was a little droopie...but who cares...lol

 

[Dre]

You should at least have a moon light on IMO. And keep in mind your ph will be low buring this blockout period.

 

[44santababy]

my acans do have the moonlight, but i wanted zero light for those days. Weird, i tested my ph using a hand held hanna and my ph was actually perfect at 8.1-8.2. In normal running of my tank my ph is 7.8-7.9 due to running my geos calcium reactor which i shut off during the lights out phase.

 

[Dre]

Off topic but why you run a calcium reactor and you have no sps? Take pics if there is a next time so we can see your accomplishments. Just a thought..

 

[44santababy]

what about my torch, froggie, clams, elegance, brain etc...all need stable calcium and such...

 

[44santababy]

next time i will take pics of before and after, didnt think about it... i do have another question...i noticed patches of dark maroon red on my rocks..what is it? Its like the peices of rock turn dark red...

 

[44santababy]

came home to a very happy, clean looking tank. Just completed a 25 gallon water change to hopefully remove a lot of the die off from the cyano. It was only one full day with lights on, lets see what happens...keep you posted...

 

[JT101]

I had a serious HA takeover a couple years ago on my AquaPod AP24. I shut my lights down for 4 days but did nothing at all. Gave my corals a few more days of light and then shut lights down again but THIS time I covered all glass with black cloth. It was dead dark in there. After a few days of this I noticed much of the HA was gone and there was NO film algae. Set things back to normal. About a week later it was back because I didn't fix the cause of the problem.

 

[BaaMNYC]

came home to a very happy, clean looking tank. Just completed a 25 gallon water change to hopefully remove a lot of the die off from the cyano. It was only one full day with lights on, lets see what happens...keep you posted...

Curious if it came back?

 

[44santababy]

no it did not, but i reduced my feedings and perform weekly water changes now...i have decided once a month to shut off my lights for 48 hours just to mimic a storm...i like what it did for my corals.

 

[BaaMNYC]

no it did not, but i reduced my feedings and perform weekly water changes now...i have decided once a month to shut off my lights for 48 hours just to mimic a storm...i like what it did for my corals.

That's great. I'm currently 12 hours lights out and have cut down in feeding too.