Tip of the Day – 9/13/2012

When setting up a light for your refugium, make sure that it doesn’t fuel algae growth inside of clear vinyl tubing and clear aquarium equipment. Because these items are clear, the light will easily penetrate into the water and cause all sorts of unwanted algae to grow. While in most cases this only turns out to be a nuisance, there are plenty of times when the algae buildup has gotten bad enough to completely cut off water flow through the tubing. To prevent this algae growth, try using black vinyl tubing instead of the clear stuff, and try placing a light blocking divider between the protein skimmer (or media reactors), and the refugium lamp. This will mostly stretch out the amount of time between equipment maintenance.