Photoperiod

[Tim_Koles]

Just curious what most people set for their photoperiod. Do you do it the same with all your tanks/plants or do you adjust with specific plants?

[halak]

I adjust them anywhere from 7-10 hours a day. If I see a lot of algae, that is one thing I might change.

[Linus_Cello]

I have a photoperiod of 9 hours for afternoon to 10:30 in evening. I recently switched to Twinstar. So far no excessive algae growth, but will ratchet back photoperiod if the algae gets worse.

[Tim_Koles]

Reason I'm asking is that I usually have mine set for about 8 hours. I have a sword that looks good but is not growing exactly as I would expect. Looking at the Kasselmann book, she mentions long day, 12 hours, vs shorter photoperiods as having an effect on how swords grow. Not in growth or no growth but in how they grow. I'm adjusting that tank to a longer photoperiod to see if it has an effect on how that sword grows. Also trying it with my tank that has my Tiger lotus.

I occasionally have some algae issues which are annoying as they occur in tanks tanks that I have no fish and therefore don't feed. I get bad string algae that is hard to remove so I combined a two week blackout period while adding a UV light filter. I figure that even though this is not a single cell algae, it still spreads but single cells or at least small pieces that could be blasted. It worked fabulously.

[krisw]

I do 8 hours on all tanks, but use dimmers to adjust the lighting intensity. For the sword, let us know how that experiment goes. Increasing by 4 hours may require less intensity to avoid algae.