Switching from a hob to a canister filter on a 5 week old tank, algae problems!

Use hydrogen peroxide to kill the algae on your driftwood, brush scrub the residue off before returning the wood to the tank.

 

The light you're running is a 65 watt LED @4900 lumens, looks light a pretty high powered fixture. I didn't see any way to reduce the amount of light on the fixture controls, I would go less than 8 hours when you're starting out. Save yourself the headache and go something like 6.5 hours.

Which Eheim canister are you going to get?

 

The brighter the light you have the more important it is to use enough CO2. It looks like this light is one of the brightest you can get, but the manufacturer doesn't bother to tell us how much light it produces. You probably need to make sure you have enough CO2 from the day you set up the tank. That can be a tricky process, because there is no one number that you can be sure equals "enough" CO2. How are you diffusing the CO2 into the water? How are you determining that you are using enough? When you have that much light, and algae problems, you can almost be sure you are not getting enough CO2 in the water.

 

A hob was all i had back in the day. Got by fine and gReat. CAN I really suggest you look into a wet/dry filter if your into media/bacteria establishment/and just generally cleaner water, thats if you go for the upgrade. Not reading the whole post, can say algae problems are not from the hob, even if its low flow and low circulation.

 

Hey Pikez, Is the part number for that LaMotte kit 4491-DR-01?

 

Is it really too much light?

I ran a Rotalabutterfly calculation on the OP light intensity and came up with 74 PAR and 1.45 Watt per gal. For comparison, my 75 gal has 62 PAR and 1.5 Watt per gal, and I always thought I have medium light only. Am I wrong that I actually have too much light, not too little.




I agree that it's difficult to figure out CO2 ppm. I like the idea of using pH drop to determine the adequacy of CO2 and forget about bps, drop checker or ppm. However, I don't understand why you suggest using degassed tap water as the starting point rather than degassed tank water at the start of photo period as the starting point. Please explain.

Lastly, I like to comment that the OP shouldn't blame on the canister for the algae. There are many reasons why algae popped up, and every hobbyist, specially newbie, has to deal with algae sooner or later. I have been successful in controlling algae by spot spraying with hydrogen peroxide, dosing Excel, and providing stable CO2.

 

Has the PAR calculator been updated to every single kind of LED chip, the calculator is using CREE chips, I don't think those are CREE chips in that Twinstar retina burner? How can it know the output of the fixture without those specifications? I use 35 watt LED floods for an outdoor vehicle, and those things are bright as heck, that's a 65 watt led over a small tank....can I test that light for my nighttime offroad drives?

 

If the OP light is indeed what you cited: 65 watt LED @4900 lumens. The calculator is not too far off as the calculated lumen is 5298, about 8% over rated above 4900. I also judge that the OP has only 1.45 watt/gal. which is in the medium light range based on the T12 rule even after adjusting upward 50%. Most commercial LED listed their light to be 30-50 % more efficient than comparable CFL, and I assume 50% above T12.

Simply looking bright to our eye does not mean it is bright enough for plants. LED always look brighter than other light because the light originates from point sources and is highly directional.

I notice many hobbyists use two Finex lights to grow stem plants, which is twice as powerful as the OP. I presently have 1.5 watt/gal and 132000 lumens for my 75 gal, comparable to the OP light intensity, and still not enough for stem plants.

 

I was really trying to emphasize is that LED chips vary a ton, take this BML fixture by fluence bioengineering. They make commercial led grow lights. Notice the difference in PAR using this LED chip vs a CREE chip in the calculator using your numbers. Getting close to 300 par. If he's getting nonstop algae and throws a top-of-the-line led on things it could be frustrating if the algae gets worse.

 

If you are referring to the entire universe of LED, there are many diode type and the output is highly variable. But for aquarium strip lights, the diodes are typically 0.1, to 0.5 watt each. so the output is within a narrow range. I believe high power Finex and Plant Plus use 0.5 watt diode,whereas cheap LED from Ebay use 0.1 to 0.2 watt diode.

For aquarium strip light, "Cree" provides the best PAR estimate. You can verify it by comparing the calculator output with known PAR values posted in review threads in the Lighting forum. BML is no longer available for sale, and the calculated PAR values are suspect and unverifiable.