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Cycling without lighting???


jasontatro

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I see alot of people saying that they are cycling their tanks without having their lighting systems up and running. Is this cool? I thought yo needed to have an established lighting setup before you could add your LR/LS. Or can you just cycle using NO?

 

I would greatly appreciate some advice here. If I can start my cycle now, it would give me a few more days to finish getting my lighting setup done.

 

 

Jason

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From what I have read you can cycle with or without lights. Live rock and sand don't really need any light but some of the things growing on it would do better with lights.

 

I would set up a lighting system of some kind. If you want you can use NO lighting (actually I think garf.org recomends lower lighting to begin with for corraline growth).

 

HTH

 

Harly-turning the lights on to cycle his room-Kin

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It's really up to you but I'd recommend leaving them totally off or have them on for just a few (like 2 or so) hours a day. The main reason is to keep algae growth down when you have a high organic and nutient content from cycling. All the dieoff breaking down is just tons of food for algae blooms which can be a severe PITA. Once your cycled and do a water change you can set them to a normal light cycle.

 

Cameron

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I agree with physh. I started my nano and had the lights on 11 hours a day for nearly 5 days...hair algae galore. Now that I cut back to 5 hours, the algae has ceased growing, and is slowly diminishing. Its WAY easier to get algae than to get rid of it.

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It all depends if you know what your doing :P

 

 

I always cycle with the lights on, and never have had any hair algae outbreak. Why? Because I don't let the water become a toxic waste dump :P

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Yeah, you can do water changes and run carbon and stuff like that but IMO that is just moeny you really don't need to spend if you have patience and are ok with minimal or no light during a cycle. It's a preference thing I guess....

 

Cameron

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