Lights And Ph Question

[newbie fish keeper]

i have set my fluval 180litre bow fronted tank (very proud of it!! ) for the lights to stay on for 9 hours, i have started to get green algea is this becoz the lights are on too long.

i only have 5 platies in the tank the levels seem to be settling down but i still have ammonia of .5 and a ph of 8 (which has gone up in the past few days) will this high ph hurt my fish, i dont want to add any new fish until the levels are good (well, as good as my other tank) recently i added water to the new tank from the old one and dangled a good handful of gravel in front of the filter intake in one of my wifes pop socks (haha she noticed but said nothing...i think the knowing look was enough... )

any help would be great...

 

[three-fingers]

Not because the lights are on too long, you just get algae on new tanks because they aren't stable

The pH won't hurt your fish, platies like a high pH . It would be easier in the future to choose fish that like a high pH.

Obviously the ammonia will be harming the fish, so be doing lot's of water changes or use something like seachem prime to make the ammonia available to the filter bacteria but not harmful to the fish.