Too much light?

[drodgers]

Am I paranoid? The reason is because I have GDA and from reading here I starting to think I'm over lit.
Its a 6 foot tank 125g

I'm using a 6 foot T5 HO fixture with 2 bulbs at 65w each one 65k and one rosette bulb 450nm I believe.

The second light is a 48" 80w 10k led with Cree lights.

Ive just added a 5 foot spray bar with another filter to improve my co2 circulation , but I think my lights are the trouble.

I do have plants that require high light and they do well on the tops not so much on the bottom.

What do you think?

 

[ian_m]

There is no such thing as a "high light" plant. All plants require light. There are however plants that require higher CO2 levels to flourish.

That is a lot of light about 1W/US gal with just the T5 tubes, then 80W LED....hope your CO2 levels and distribution is spot on of else algae will be an issue. Oh algae is

GDA can be caused by poor CO2 levels, fluctuating CO2 levels, poor circulation and also sometimes low nutrients. Achieving good flow and CO2 distribution in a large tank will be hard, even harder to match to that level of light.

I would suggest less light at first and trying your drop checker at various places around the tank to see what CO2 distribution is like. I was really surprised my drop checker was blue/green at lights on bottom left hand side of tank, despite being green/yellow elsewhere in the tank. Actually, green algae on the left hand side of tank was more of an indicator of poor CO2 distribution. Fixed with a power head in my case.

 

[drodgers]

Thanks that pretty much the conclusion i came to as well ,I think my problem was caused by a kink in my hose at my co2 reactor .

I'm pretty well maxed out for flow i have three canisters the biggest with a spray bar, 2 water fans and a uv with power head.

As for the plants I think some plants require higher lights to grow properly

The two culprits in my tank Madagascar Lace and Giant red Rotala.
The Rotala left untrimmed melts below below 5 inchs because of low light penetration.

 

[drodgers]

GDA gone
Just wanted to post my happiness
Cut my lighting in half and all GDA stopped overnight ..
Kept up the CO2 at 30ppm hopefully my growth wont slow to much
I can thank this forum for the great info.

 

[ian_m]

GDA gone

Result.

As your plant mass builds up and you get better CO2 distribution you can start increasing the light level to increase plant growth and make the tank look brighter.

 

[Sacha]

Did you cut the photoperiod in half or the intensity?

 

[Edvet]

Why do you run UV? I don't think it will have benefits, maybe only in a bare quarantine tank, and even then most UV units are inefficient (to little power, not enough dwelling time)

 

[drodgers]

Did you cut the photoperiod in half or the intensity?

Intensity.I took out the 10k led .