I say its bunk!

I bet if you wanted to do an experiment you could. Say you set up a 10 gallon tank with fish only and put 4 watts of light over it. Feed fish heavy and only turn lights on for two 5 hour periods a day with a siesta of an hour in between. I would be willing to bet that within a week or two at the most you would have algae, and a lot more of it on the way.


I mean if someone says that with this condition algae wont grow why then must I add co2 and ferts to my tank. I simply go with 5 on .....siesta......5 on. The hole in this theory IMHO is big enough to drive a truck through. Lots of trucks.

I can understand if you have more than one bank of lights to have lower light in morning, a noon burst of higher light and lower light in the evening. This might make more sense to me.

I am not saying people who use this approach do not have successful tanks free of algae. I just don't buy that algae uses a timer to decide when its time to grow.

I combat algae the "old fashioned way" myself. Concentrate on plants growing well , co2 , ferts , cleaning pruning. This has been successful for me. I have had tanks free of algae. All algae none to be found. Of course I would be lying if I said my tank is free of algae at the moment. Far from it. I let things go for a couple months and now I am paying the price. It happens and I will beat the algae again as I have in the past. Concentrating on good co2 and good plant growth.