Lighting and algae...

[SmallFry]

My new tank has been up and running for a while. I seeded the dry rock with a couple of rocks from the old tank. They are at the bottom of the tank. I notice that the coralline algae on the tops of them is pale now, or white. The hair algae on the rocks at the top of the tank (about a third of the way down) is not very green more like pale brown or white; fortunately there's not much of it either... The hair algae at the bottom is nice and green if hair algae is ever nice. Green star polyps growing like weeds at the bottom of the tank. There was also some weed or macro algae that was deep red in the old tank and it grew white in the new one. I say was because Truffles the sea urchin ate it..

Does this sound like I'm punching too much light into this thing? Lights are a DIY led array. 24 Cree XP-G cool white with 65 degree optics and 24 XP-E royal blue with 60 degree optics. I'm driving both channels at 700mA and the fixture is about 10 inches above the top of the tank. I've never done reef before or used anything more powerful than two 15W fluorescents so I have nothing to compare to and no idea how much light I need. The green star polyps are my only coral so far and they seem ok but I hear they're invincible...


Back to the hair algae again, does anyone have any suggestions for getting the stuff out of my green star polyps? I'm currently thinking toothbrush....

I'd appreciate any insight..
Thanks,
Rob.

[Enigma]

Which one of your tanks? Mexican Turbo Snails love GHA. They are bulldozers, and they will knock things around, but they'll get the job done.

I'd add one Mexican Turbo to the 27 gallon, and two to the 75 gallon. At those numbers they should hopefully be able to sustain themselves after cleaning everything up. Basically, one Mexican Turbo for every 30 gallons. I have two in my 10 gallon display, and I need to supplement them with nori. There isn't a spec of nuisance algae in my tank: with the exception of a little bit of GHA on one of their shells.

Not sure about your lighting question.

[SmallFry]

Sorry, I should have mentioned its the 75.. I already have a few snails in there - five turbos (not Mexican to my knowledge) and the one of three nassarius that allowed himself to be captured from the other tank. I don't want to be too over-snailed since I have a Kole Tang who eats a lot of algae in the 27 which is now functioning as quarantine. He goes to the big tank at the weekend..

Do you think if I put one of the turbos right on the GSP frag it'd eat the stuff out from between the stalks/polyps?

[Enigma]

I'm not sure if the non-Mexican turbos are great at eating algae or not.

My Mexican Turbos regularly clean my daisy polyps and the rest of my corals.