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T5 is too strong?

964 Views 4 Replies 5 Participants Last post by  Hoppy, 
M
OK I've bought an entire set up to make my 75 gallon tank a high tech planted tank. Anyway; whenever I use my T5 light I end up spending 2 hours every saturday to do my WC, all from scrubbing algae off (it gets really bad). Anyways i swapped the light back to the old 25W florescent bulb for a week now, and i didnt have a piece of algae to scrub this WC which took 30 min. The light is on 8-9 hours a day. I have mostly Amazon swords and dwarf hairgrass so its not so bad with such a low light for now. This also gives my otocinculos some time to clean my amazons sword's algae off (which btw is working amazingly). The algae is soooo frustrating but my tank is absolutly spotless with the low light. My question is what can I do to use the T5 without the algae growth? I spent plenty of money on the T5 and wanna put it too good use. the only thing i can think of to do is put more plants to absorb more light (the tank is like "mediumly" planted).

I appreciate the help!
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FSM
How many bulbs does the fixture have? You most likely just have too much light; get a CO2 system or you are stuck with algae.
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hbosman
If you are using high light, you will need to ad co2, preferably pressurized. If you add high light and co2, you need to add nutrients. If you increase one, you have to increase the other two. It's a balancing act.
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BottomFeeder
I can't imagine running a 75g tank with a 25w bulb and keeping any plant alive.

Were you running 1 t5 bulb or more, and are they t5 or t5 high output?

I run a low-tech 55g with swords, crypts, anubias, etc with 2.35 wpg of CFL light without any algae. I only dose excel a few days a week.
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H
There are a lot of benefits to suspending the light fixture above the tank, so it can easily be raised and lowered to adjust the light intensity. One big benefit is that the difference in intensity at the top of the tank and at the substrate level isn't nearly as great when the light is 6+ inches above the top of the tank. Using a "topless" tank with a suspended light fixture also makes it easy to do minor maintenance daily - picking out dead leaves, fluffing plants, etc. and that does a lot of good for avoiding algae.
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