Indirect Sunlight

[bloom]

I've read that with direct sunlight there's risk of algae in your tank. How about with indirect sunlight?--bright indirect sunlight?, less strong indirect sunlight?. My tank is about 20 feet away from a big east facing window and can get bright indirect sunlight in the AM if I open the blinds, and weaker indirect sunlight in the afternoon. I have very low light in my tank (2 NO 24" strip lights in a tall 56g tank 30x18x24h--one 20w sylvania gro-lux and one 18w T8 "daylight" bulb), but so far my low light plants (anubias, java, some hygro and hornwort) are growing (I've seen a couple small "symptoms" that I may ask about in a different post, or may just wait a couple weeks to let the plant get more established). Tank has been planted for 2 1/2 weeks. There's also an amazon sword that lost all its leaves (that one was planted maybe 6-7 weeks ago when I first set up the tank), and is now growing new leaves.

Is adding indirect sunlight like adding any other light source--more light changes the balance so you have to get nutrients, CO2 and light in balance? Or is indirect sunlight (if it's at all bright) so strong that it's pretty much a recipe for much algae.

Thanks for the help.

Steve 8)

[chirohorn]

My tank gets indirect sunlight and will grow algae on the sides of the aquarium & plants. Enough that I've got to wipe it down every 3 weeks or so. The brown algae made the plants look horrible & dirty. So I decided to ditch the live plants for now.

[bloom]

Thanks for the info Pete. It seems that the couple of times I've let the tank get much indirect sun-light--just a few hours, thread algae started to grow. I think each time was pretty soon after a wc and tank and plants are pretty new (plants just 3 weeks), so maybe had something to do with that. But think I'll try to avoid any sun for the tank, at least for now. Thanks again for the reply.

Steve