LED Lighting Schedule

[mitchrapp]

Seeking input on altering my LED lighting schedule from FOWLR to reef with LPS.

This is my current LED lighting schedule for my FOWLR:

ramp up for an hour starting at 6 am
full lighting from 7 am - 8 pm
Ramp down for an hour until 9 pm
Completely off

This is solely for my viewing pleasure as I like to look at my fish and feed them in the morning before leaving for work and when I return for work, and like to view them at full lighting.

As I begin to add some LPS (mostly hammers), what would you recommend to change in terms of my lighting schedule? I realize I have balance my pleasure with the needs of the corals, but I would like to avoid really dim or really blue lighting during prime viewing hours (6-8 pm).

For reference, I have a Build My LED 20k multichannel very high output strip, set at default settings (100% across the 3 color channels).

 

[scumbag_gli]

Waaaaaay too long IMO. I would change it to ramp up 1 hour, main lighting for 7-8 hours, ramp down for 1 hour. So a total of 9-10 hours max.

 

[mitchrapp]

Yeah, I figured I would have to change the duration. I may forgo the early morning time and just start ramping up later in the am since my time in the morning before heading out is limited anyways. Why do some people have really long ramp up/down times (like 4 hours)? Is that more beneficial for coral growth?

 

[organism]

Yeah, I figured I would have to change the duration. I may forgo the early morning time and just start ramping up later in the am since my time in the morning before heading out is limited anyways. Why do some people have really long ramp up/down times (like 4 hours)? Is that more beneficial for coral growth?

+1 on cutting the lighting way down. I do 11 hours of just blues and 6 hours of blues and whites but the whites are at around 30%.

Personally I don't think there's much benefit to long ramp up/down times, but people do it because it's more "natural." The thing is the best colors are when you blast them with blues for 10-12 hours a day, corals don't care about ramp times.

 

[Webmanny]

agreed with the above. I only run mine at full power (60%) for about 8 hours max with 30 minutes of ramp up and down on each end.

 

[scumbag_gli]

Theres no real benefit honestly. 15-30 minutes ramping is plenty.

 

[Webmanny]

I agree that the ramp up and down does nothing for the corals. In my case it is solely to avoid startling my fish. Before, they always jumped or hid when the lights came on with the timer. Now, they don't.

I prefer it this way, as I already lost a fish that jumped out of the tank because the lights scared him.