opposite lighting schedule?

illal

Active member
i was thinking about getting a separate timer for the lights on my fuge and running them opposite of my display ... will it really be that benaficial?? or a waste of time??
 
A normal tank will have a pH swing from morning to evening. In theory, if you have your refugium on the opposite time cycle, the pH swing will be negated or reduced.
Risk of 24 is your plants may go sexual
BTW I run 24/7
Because i need light to work on my sump- but for no other reason.
 
i heard you risk going sexual when you dont run the lights 24 hours a day....

great thread, never read the whole thing though.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=313318

posted by melev ---- The floodlight I'm using works great. I do keep it on 24/7 because I just didn't bother to put it on a timer. It uses 19w (an hour?) and the plants seem completely unaffected by the continuous light. Matter of fact, I don't know that I want to try turning it off, with the excellent growth I get. I pruned (or fragged) my Cheatomorpha 4 or 5 times in the past month for others, and last night my refugium was a packed brick of Macro algae again!

Oh, so does anyone recommend running the fuge lights 24/7? I have been told that running them on the scedule of the display tank is best because photosynthetic plants need a "dark" period. I just thought I'd ask because I am not currently running the lights all the time.

later posted by melev Jcc, if you are growing caulerpa, I recommend leaving the lights on 24/7. If you have other macro algaes, it might be okay to continue with a reverse-lighting cycle.
 
I run reverse, but I've got a small sandless sump/refugium that mostly just grows coralline and a little bit of cheato. Even a few pocillapora too. I wanted it to stabilize pH but it doesn't do a great job of that. Oh well, at least I have cheato in there for nutrient export.
 
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