How much light?

Julie's Julies

I am having trouble finding the right balance for light. I have a ten-gallon planted tank with two overly-happy bunches of Ludwigia, two monster amazon swords, three spindly little who-knows-whats (they look like the plants that you see in betta vases), two Anubias, and some long-stalked fan-looking-like thing that reminds me of twisted valise that is not twisted. I have two compact fluorescents in the hood that I am currently running 9 hours a day (four in the morning, then an afternoon break, then five hours in the evening). I use plant tab fertilizers but nothing else. The Ludwigia and algae is growing rampant! Am I leaving the lights on too long? There are two baby Goldfish in there, so I do a biweekly 25% water change to keep the nitrates down, but should I change it more often since algae thrives on nitrates? They only get up to about 15ppm before I change the water.

fish_4_all

How many watts of lighting and what type of lighting will help if you know it.

Also, algae is not caused by any one nutrient, it is caused by an imbalance of them. There is somethng you are missing that is causing your algae to grow so rampantly. Could be PO4, could be micros, could be carbon. I am actually looking to get some more Flourish Excel to take care of my algae because my dosing makes it almost impossible to have a deficiency short of a Carbon source.

Julie's Julies

I want to say that my UV lights are 11 watts each, but I cannot remember for certain and I just chucked the boxes to them recently. I've cut back the light a little more and very slowly the algae is diminishing. What types of imbalances should I be looking for? Is there any way to test for them, or do I just need to play with the water changes, lighting, and fertilizers a little to find out where the imbalance is? I was also told that my Goldfish would eat some of the algae...they don't. :)