Bulbs Coralife Turbo

reef tank lighting?

Hi, I have a question on my lighting on my reef tank i just started a few weeks ago, I know the lighting is differant then my 75 gallon fish only tank,
My question is i have a coralife light thats 48 inches long and its 432 watt with # t-5 bulbs with lunar light , my question is how long should i have them on, i know the blue light or uv light should come on first and go off last , i have then set an hour apart to come on and go off and i have had them timed on and of for 13 hrs i`m starting to get some brown alge build up and im thinking its coming from the lights being on to long , please let me know what you think , i have live rock live sand cleaner shrimp turbo snails one fire shrimp and then my fish and coral

First off you need to look at the corals you are going to keep. Most corals require 12-14 hours of lighting to thrive. I turn mine on in my reef tank when I get up and they don't go off until I go to bed (in excess of 16 hours per day) It is always better to have more light than not enough. 12-14 is a good and required range for most.

Also, as with your brown algae, no worries unless it is taking over. Remember removing too much from the tank is not allowing the good stuff like silicates to enhabit the tank. your corals as well as many other creatures need this silicate in the tank to be healthy. 2ppm-5pmm. Also your ammonia at .05 nitrates 5ppm (You never want to go higher than 40 with the nitrates) other items like boron should be around <10. Some test kits do not test for some of these.

Annemone also need various amounts of light so you don't want to CUT the light if you have these in the tank

Here is a slide show of my reef tank.

http://s172.photobucket.com/albums/w10/Fishqueen_2000/?action=viewwidgets

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