Light Cycle Questions???? Please Help!

[DB88]

I have a BC29 that i recently retrofitted with a kit from Steves Leds. Awesome by the way. 18 3watt royal blue and 10 3watt whites. Lots of light. i've had the tank up and running for about 6 months. I just did the retrofit 2 months ago. I dont have any kind of controller so i have my lights on a timer right now they come on at 10am and shut off at 9pm is that too long? i have them running at about 80% and everything seems pretty happy. although i do have quite a bit of algea on the sand ever since i put the leds on. Here is a list of the corals i currenly have...

30lbs LR
30LBS LS

Feather Duster
Birdsnest
Red Cap Monti
Super Natural Monti
Green Poliserapora
Blue Corcea Clam
Leather Coral
Green Star Polyp
Some sort of a green Polyp that are about the size of a nickle?
Iron Man Mushroom. (Orange Mushroom) it wasnt doing well so i put it in a shaded area last night.
RBTA (NEW) Not sure if its very happy. possibly added too soon? ive had it for about 2 weeks. its about the size of a baseball. ive been feeding it chopped up silversides once a day. but for the past two days it seems to be shrivled up for most of the day. but still hanging on to the rock.

Some of these are probly mispelled sorry.

All of my water parameters seem pretty stable. im trying to solve the algea problem. is 11hours to loag to run my lights. when im home a usually tone down the whites at baout 7pm. any advice would be much appreciated.

sorry for the randomness of this question. too much redbull

 

[DaveK]

Since you have an algae problem, I would cut back on the photoperiod. If you were not, then 11 hours a day would be fine.

Just to give you an example, I only run my lights about 8 hours a day.

When you make changes in lighting, go slow. Don't go from 11 hours to 8 all at once. Cut it back an hour or so every couple of weeks. Same thing applies if you want to increase the photoperiod.

 

[ddelozier]

8hr photoperiod will do fine for your corals. As for the algae on the sand/rock, that has many causes. Here's one way to find out. Do a total black out, ie lights never come on, for 2 days. Then do 2hr photo period for 3 more days. The algae should recede. When you see this happening, test for nitrates/phosphates. If either shows up, do a couple 10-20% water changes, run for 12 hrs and test again. Dont worry, 3-4 days with little or no light wont harm your corals. Once you have the algae gone or nearly gone, have tests showing little or no Nitrate/phosphate, go back to a 6 hr per day photo period and observe for 10 days. If no algae, up it to 8 hours.

the prob with algae is, it holds nutrients, so if you test you may see nothing. If you have algae, the nutrients are there. Cut the lights, let the algae die, and do W/C to get rid of them. Other option is to get something that mows down whatever kind of algae you have. which wont get rid of the nutrients, but will the algae.