Light Siestas

[julia298]

I give my tank the lights on for 5hr, 3 or 4 hr siesta, and on 5 hours.

But when my lights are off, the room is very bright so the tank is still getting some light (tank not in sun at any time tho).
I read that algae can thrive in lower levels of light where plants need good light, so wondered if the siesta is just doing the algae (which has just began to rear its ugly head) a favour?

 

[plantbrain]

Plants do better at lower light, they are more efficient and better able to capture light than most algae.
Plants block the light that algae might get also.

Siesta have been suggested but no one has shown they are really effective.
Algae and plants use the same types of photosynthetic machinery.


What seintas often do is allow more CO2 to buold back up in the tank that 's niot getting enough CO2 to begin with.

Poor CO2 is why such tanks have algae issues to start with.
Siesta basically just lowers the light intensity/duration.

So less light, or more CO2 and then the siesta will do nothing for the tank, nor algae.

95% of all algae issueas are CO2 related.

So best to focus on the cause, rather than some quick fix that really does not work well nor helps the plants.
Blackouts should mess with algae even more, we all see how poorly they work except BGA and a very few others. Also, simply lowering the light over all will help also.

Basically you do not gain any advantage over algae using the siesta if the the other parameters are in order.
Problem is, folks do not have those parameters in order, thus the plants are not not growing as well as they could. When the plants do not grow well, algae does.

So fix the real issue, poor plant growth.
Siesta does not offer any algae control with good CO2, typically you have no such need to algae control with good nutrients and CO2.

regards,
Tom Barr

 

[Jen]

Hmm. Some of that sounds a little fishy to me... ie. "Plants do better in low light" - what about plants that require high light like red plants?

I would like to see some other coments on this subject.

I agree that a black out is a quick fix, and will not solve the problem in the long run.

I use a siesta in my tank, and have noticed a big difference. If I leave the light on for 10 hours straight I get green water and more spots of algea on my plants. With my 3 hour break I haven't seen any green in the water, and no algea on plants. I keep my CO2 at 38mg/l, and my plants are always pearling so I would highly doubt that I don't have enough in my tank. I also keep up on my nutrients (using the Estimative Index method) so all my parameters are in sync - the right co2 and nutrients for the amount of light I have.

 

[George Farmer]

Hmm. Some of that sounds a little fishy to me... ie. "Plants do better in low light" - what about plants that require high light like red plants?

I missed this one.

Tom is referring to "plants do better in low light" - better than algae. Not better in low light in general. Otherwise half the posts on here wouldn't be low light problem related.

Jen - have you tested your CO2 using the one point pH method?

1. Take a sample of tank water.
2. Test pH and note result.
3. Leave water sample for 24 hours.
4. Re-test pH

A difference in pH of one will indicate 30ppm CO2 in the original sample i.e. tank water.

This method seems to work better than using pH/KH tables, there's no KH test to further reduce accuracy.

Even better would be to invest in a digital pH meter. There quite cheap these days.

 

[Jen]

I havent heard of that method George... I will deffinatly give it a shot on monday when I have some time to devote to the tank.

Thanks

 

[Themuleous]

Def worth a shot Jen, i realised after using this method that my CO2 was and always has been to low.

Sam