Lighting Schedules

Dustin07

Active member
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.
 
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. šŸ˜Š 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.
 
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!
 
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.
 
Thereā€™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
 
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!
 
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.
 
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.
 
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