Lights off every weekend?

[brett559]

So my tank is at my office. No one is there Saturday and Sunday. I come by and feed the tank on Sundays, but otherwise no one is there. I occasionally have some mild cyano or diatoms. I've incorporated the lights-out technique and I find that it helps.

I had a thought - what if I turned the lights off each weekend, i.e. no lights Saturday and Sunday? Would that cause harm to the corals and fish to routinely have the lights off each weekend? Every time I've done the lights-out, the corals open up right away when the lights come back on.

What do you think?

 

[scooters reef]

I'm thinking they were happy to get some light again Why use lights out though and not work on reducing nutrients?

 

[brett559]

I definitely still work at keeping nutrients low. I use phosphate media and do 30% water changes every two weeks. Nutrients aren't an issue - nitrates and phosphates are very low. I have trouble with some dead spots in flow I think.

Anyway, my point was that if literally there is no one there to see the tank and cutting the light may help lessen some problems (cyano and diatoms), is it worthwhile to do? Obviously, the worry is that reducing light two days would impede coral growth.

 

[Ron Reefman]

I'm not a fan of your light fixture, but over an 18" deep tank, it can work (just marginal IMHO). But your light is controllable right? So rather than going full lights out for the weekend, why not run the blue leds and not the white, red and greens? The corals will still respond to the blue light and polyp out. But most algae prefer white/red spectrum and they can't do photosynthesis with blue spectrum like the zooxanthellae in the coral can. Kind of the best of both worlds. I had a nasty algae problem and 3 days of lights out cures the symptoms, but 5 days with just blue leds was perfectly OK with the corals and seemed even harder on the algae. And gave me more time to deal with nutrient issues. Since your's isn't so bad, maybe weekends with just blue light will do the trick?

 

[brett559]

I'm not a fan of your light fixture, but over an 18" deep tank, it can work (just marginal IMHO).

I wanted a light with a built in controller, and that had a slim profile. I couldn't hang anything from the ceiling, and I didn't want goosenecks or a canopy. I knew I wasn't going to keep SPS, so i went for it. I got the LED Pro model, and I can you 100% that it can grow corals. Plus I got it super cheap on Amazon. I've been really happy with it.

As for your suggestion of blues-only on weekends, that's a really good idea. I think I'll give it a try. Thanks!