my dosage plan

Re: my dosage plan

JadeButterfly,
If I may stick my nose in here: I think 2 X 96w over a 45 gallon is too much
light which may be creating your algae woes. This is equivalent to 5.5-6 wpg
of NO lighting, maybe more. 2 x 55w 6700K would have been a better choice, all the light you need for just about anything.

The 45 gallon, same footprint as a 3-foot 50 only a couple inches shorter?
I'm planning on getting that size or a 65g 4-footer. Like the 18" front-to-back
depth of those tanks for aquascaping

Your 4x a week regimen every other day only works on planets that have 8
days in a week, reminiscent of an old Beatles' tune. Just kidding, everything
you've listed looks like textbook Barr (EI, when he gets around to writing the textbook )except for the lighting.

My 2c,

Bill Ruyle

 

Re: my dosage plan

Actually it is only 4.3 w/gal. I've heard of people using a lot more with lots of success. How long are the lights on each day?

 

Re: my dosage plan

My 5.5-6 wpg is estimated for normal output fluorescent bulbs. CF lighting has
up to 1/3 more intensity at equivalent wattage (using appropriate reflectors). The watts-per-gallon rule was originally based on NO fluorescent lighting.

 

Re: my dosage plan

One more thing: I like to equate what we do with our tanks to the "Fire Triangle." I'm sure you've seen this where the 3 sides are labeled HEAT, OXYGEN, FUEL. If you remove just one of these, the fire goes out.
In planted tanks our triangle is CO2, LIGHT, NUTRIENTS. If you increase
one thing, you correspondingly have to increase the others...or bad juju happens With 4.3 watts of cf lighting, the "metabolism" of the tank is elevated to where you need to increase the CO2 and nutrients as well.
I may have an imperfect understanding of EI, but I thought it was based
on roughly 2-3 watts per gallon of *equivalent* NO fluorescent lighting.

But isn't the method moveable--up and down the wattage?

Well, I was going to delete this message entirely, but decided to leave the above as a shining banner to my misconceptions. My triangle
theory doesn't really encompass water quality: low/hi KH, low/hi GH, etc. I
distinctly remember Tom(?) embroiled on an APD thread where you don't need
the light intensity of a newborn sun to grow gloss. Guess I'll check their archives....