Recommended day/night light timing

jsm11482

Hi, I just got a bunch of stuff from the LFS, including a new Coralife Deluxe Lunar Aqualite. It uses compact flourescent tubes and came with 2 65 watt True Actnic 03 tubes, 2 65 watt 10,000K daylight tubes, and has 4 blue moon-glow LEDs. What would you recommend as far as timing goes? On-time, off-time of the 3 different lights?

crazie.eddie

I have one the Coralife 72" deluxe lights on my 125 gallon tank. This is my lighting schedule

10:00am-10:00pm - Main lights ON
9:45pm-12:00am - Moon lights (Leds)


The reason I turn on the moon ligghts 15 minutes prior to the main lights going off is to make sure the moon lights are on, since they are both on 2 different timers.

I switched the actinics with 6700K watt bulbs, but I realize I like the 10000k bulbs better. The 6700 bulbs make things look more yellowish. Unfortunately, I broke one of the actinic bulbs. They don't do much for a freshwater tank, other than making the blues on fish more bluer.

jsm11482

Cool, 10-10 is what I had planned! I want to have a complete cycle, Day, Actnic, Night (LEDs). So should I do:

10am-10pm > Day
10pm-1am > Actnic
1am-7am > Night (LEDs)
7am-10am Actnic

Does that make sense? It will gradually get darker then lighter, then its day time.

crazie.eddie

I don't keep the leds on the rest of the nights, becuase I think the fish can still see with them on. If I throw food in the tank, they go directly to where the food is as if they have seen it.

I'm not sure if the actinics make a difference to fish. I just use the room lighting for dusk ligthing and when I did have actinics, only used them when guests came, since it made the fish look nicer.

jsm11482

Ok, but I think they will look cool at least, even if there is no real need for em! :D

usmc121581

On my saltwater the lights go like this:

Actincs 10:am-6:30pm
Daylights 12:pm-8:00pm
Luners 9:00-2:30am

I change it by the seasons though out the year.

Andrew

i do 7 hours at the moment and this is a stretch for my tank setup that is still maturing. i will get up to 8 hours soon, and thats where i intend it for it to stay.
People argue with me over lighting- i say no more than 10- but some books state that 12 hours is the minimum, but they dont state how they have come to this conclusion.

Of course it depends on the tank, if you have a bare tank like a malawi tank then maybe you can have the lights on longer- i dont know as i have never kept one, a thinly planted tank could get away with longer hours, but if you have a heavily planted tank with CO2 and you dose with reg treatments of fert then chances are over lighting will lead to algae blooms.
I am not in the habit of preaching, i just pass on what i have learnt, and i think 6-8 hours is enough from my experience, and i think i have been relatively successful in creating a planted aquarium.

crazie.eddie

Due to an algae problem, I decided to cut mine down.

Since it's low tech, I only use 1 set of lights (2*96 watts=1.5wpg), and not the other, but I still use the blue leds.

Daylights (main) 12:00pm-10:00pm
Daylights (secondary) OFF
Luners 9:45pm-1:00am