Blocking Red LED's on Chinese Black Box

Rabe · Feb 15, 2019

Wondering if anyone has an opinion on masking over, with electrical tape, the RED LED's to block the spectrum they produce.

I am battling a algae issue on a new tank and while I am addressing the issue through other means as well, I'm thinking of blocking the red LED's (or most of them) as another method of control.

For posterity, the other methods of algae control I recently implement are:

1. Added a GFO & Carbon dual canister reactor
2. Added a DI canister to my RO only unit. (phosphates were 0.3 ppm out of the RO only unit)

Does anyone have any opinions on how helpful / detrimental blocking the RED LED's on my lights?

Flippers4pups · Feb 15, 2019

Rabe said:
Wondering if anyone has an opinion on masking over, with electrical tape, the RED LED's to block the spectrum they produce.

I am battling a algae issue on a new tank and while I am addressing the issue through other means as well, I'm thinking of blocking the red LED's (or most of them) as another method of control.

For posterity, the other methods of algae control I recently implement are:

1. Added a GFO & Carbon dual canister reactor
2. Added a DI canister to my RO only unit. (phosphates were 0.3 ppm out of the RO only unit)

Does anyone have any opinions on how helpful / detrimental blocking the RED LED's on my lights?

In all honesty, they will have little to no effect on pest algae. You would need much more than two red diodes to have any effect.

How old is your tank?

What’s your water parameters?

Rabe · Feb 17, 2019

Tank is 5 months old.

Parameters are indicative of nutrients being taken up by the algae. With nitrates reading 0 ppm and phosphates reading from 0 ppm to 0.03 ppm. Before I added the DI canister, phosphates were reading 0.3 ppm out of the unit. Of course that means that the algae is taking up the nutrients.

I rip out the algae by hand and sometimes use a toothbrush but I'm getting the feeling that's helping it spread as I see new spots show up.

I'm hoping the GFO and the DI canister is going to take care of it, but I'm trying to come up with other plans as well. Maybe going to put in some trochus snails (if i can get them), emerald crab, sea hare and lettuce nudibranch.