[randymon]

My new 125 has some hair algae growing since I added my vhos a couple weeks ago. I bought a lmb and some more red legged hermits but they dont seem to be doing much. This tank isnt completley new as I upgraded from my 55 amonth ago. I know that some algae with new set ups is to be expected but I have never really dealt with hair algae before. My levels are good and I use ro water. This really only started when I added the vhos (640 watts) from my previous 220 watts of pcs. Anyways I will be going on vacation for a week on friday and was wondering if I could not feed the tank for that long and hopefully elimanate some nutrients? Mabey the lmb and my skopus tang would start eating the algae. Also could I cut my light schedule way back for that week, or would the problem return when I up the schedule again. I will add some turbos when I get back but dont want to have to worry about them getting stuck in anything while I am gone. Does my plan sound workable or should I take another approach?

[zhenya]

Randy,

Can you describe your new system a bit more? What I'm trying to understand is what type of filtration/nutrient export meachanism you have installed, and also, some more precise water parameters if you had tested would help as well. I mean I can speculate and give general advise to do water changes and all that, but for more in depth suggestions I think you;d need to provide a bit more information.

Anyways I will be going on vacation for a week on friday and was wondering if I could not feed the tank for that long and hopefully elimanate some nutrients? Mabey the lmb and my skopus tang would start eating the algae.

They could also die and polute your tank water even more. I think the more prudent thing to do would be to still feed them, maybe a bit less but starving them isn't a good idea.

Also could I cut my light schedule way back for that week, or would the problem return when I up the schedule again.

I think this would depend on what exactly you keep in your tank. If you don't have any corals cutting photoperiod back wouldn't present much of a problem, but if you do have photosynthetic corals it may be a big problem. Any adjustments in photoperiod should be done gradually, although cutting back an hour or two wouldn't be too harsh for one week. The only problem with this is that you won't be around to observe any and all reactions, if there are any.