Lighting Schedules

[Dustin07]

What lighting schedule do you find healthiest for your corals?
I leave to work very early, usually by 5:15-5:30am and get home usually around 6pm.
I'd love to enjoy the tank a bit on both ends of the day but it seems I may have to just have the lights on in the evening. Before i had a timer, I switched the lighting on before I went to work, and off before bed.

If I run full lighting from 7am till 7pm with 4hrs of moonlight, it's dark from 11pm till 6am the next morning so 7 hrs of darkness.

Any thoughts on more or less?

Using a RedSea 50w LED in a 10g upright nano.

 

[GimpyFin]

I think you will get a broad range of answers for this, as everyone's ideal schedule for their tank is a little different. IMO, as long as both you and your tank/corals are happy, you should be fine. My lights are on a total of about 10 hours a day with 1 hour ramps at each end, so about 8 hours full light. Then, a couple hours of moonlight. I have a pair of Red Sea 160S lights.

 

[Dustin07]

I was kinda thinking the same in regards to different flavors for everyone. I figured if I had a few responses I'd take the average response blended with what I "want" lol. thank you for your feedback!

 

[Dustin07]

well i'm going to have to make some changes here lol.
I leave the house at 5:30am and by the time I get home the tank is already dark. So it's only on when I'm gone and I never get to enjoy it myself, lol. I'll tinker with the RedSeas app this weekend and see what i can figure out. If the tank was completely dark for 4+ hours slowly waking up around 5am I could probably switch to moonlight around 8pm and still provide plenty of darkness... i think.

 

[Reefing102]

There’s nothing wrong with running your tank according to your schedule. I know guys who run their tanks mostly at night just to enjoy them

 

[robertifly]

I was thinking the same as reefing102, I mean YOU control the sun as far as the tank goes seems to me you can make day into night and night into day, just don't tell the fish!

 

[Timfish]

Looking at the issues caused by excessive photosynthesis I leave all the lights off for 10 - 12 hours and keep full light on for less than 8 hours. As far as when they should be turned off, as pointed out above that's totally up to you. A note on "moonlight" settings, moonlight on the reefs is ~4000K and just a fraction of 1 PAR. The lighting typcally used for moonlight is bright enough for some photosythesis.

 

[Dustin07]

Good feedback. Since I can have a few custom settings setup in the app I'll play with it a bit and see what we come up with. Right now during the transitional period I have setup around 6pm my wife is loving the vibrance of the colors. I'm amazed by the results of this new LED.