Sunlight

[davidschimmers]

Hello everyone,
My tank gets some intermittent sunlight(depends on whether the curtain of my balconie door is open or not) from a north-facing window. My question is this:

Since it's north-facing and thus not direct sunlight, does this still bring light that will fuel growth? Will this light likely be good for corals? Or just algae? Thanks,
-Dave

[sphelps]

Depending on the size and stability of the tank it could be bad or good. A major problem with direct sunlight is heat, if you can control that you should be fine and it could be benificial to corals but probably not so much due to the loss in spectrum and UV from all the glass the light has to penetrate, algae however will not be bothered by this loss and will grow faster.

[davidschimmers]

Yeah that's kind of what I was thinking. I don't think that heat will be a problem as the curtain isn't open much but the algae thing could be. Thanks,
-Dave

[Jon123]

I know as soon as I moved my tank away from a north facing window the algae went down CONSIDERABLY. It was mostly hair algae that liked the sunlight.

Jon