LIGHT SCHEDULE

[freddog]

I picked up my new light system the other day and I need a little help figuring out what type of schedule to use.

The light that I have is 260 watt. 2x65 watt 10k and 2x65 actinic blues. Seeing that the 10k's and the blues are on diffrent switches, I picked up another timer. So ech set of lights are on diffrent timers.

Should I have the 10k's come on first, and if so how long should they be on before the blues? How long should I leave the blues on after the 10k's go off?

Right now I have the 10'ks running from 9am to 5pm, banker hours...lol
But I dont now what to do about the blues....

Thanks

[reefcrazy20]

what i do for my lights is have one come one at around 9 in the morning and the other one come on at 1 then the one that came on at 9 shut off at 5 and the one that came on at 1 shut off at around 9 at night hope this helps a lil....also i don't think it matters too much what lights come on first right now i only have 10k mh i will hopefully i will be getting 20k mh good luck hopefully others will chime in and help

[kenneth]

this is they way I have mine come on and off your lighting schedule should be around the times you would be veiwing the tank since I work Late my lights come on and go off late but I have the blues come on 45 min before the white and the blues go off 45 min after the white then 3 hrs after that I have the moonlites come on and those stay on till 3 hrs before the blues come back on.. hope this helps

[Mike O'Brien]

In nature the light cycle varys from about 9 hours to about 15 hrs a day.
I agree with kenneth about having them on when you are around. my actinics come on from 11 am to 11 pm and the 6500k from 12 noon to 10 pm. My fish still jump when the first light goes out. It's actually pretty funny.

[ajensen1427]

For what it's worth, my two cents:

I have the exact same lighting configuration you do; 4x65 w/. In my reef tank I run both sets of lights together for 7 hours a day, from 6pm to after midnight. That way, when I'm just getting home from work, my reef is just coming to life and I can enjoy it all evening.

The goal here, of course, is to duplicate sunlight as closely as possible. Though it's not possible to get a perfect spectrum of sunlight from indoor bulbs, it would seem to me that the animals would do best with the closest possible approximation we can give them.

Corals and anemones follow both cycles of the sun and the moon (apparently) so I try not to screw with that any more than I have to... after all, in the wild, they wouldn't be exposed to pure actinic-blue light any more than they would pure 10000K white light for any length of time. You could certainly argue that the blue simulates morning and evening and I suppose that's a valid point too.

I plugged both sides of my lighting system into one strip, running off of one timer.

[enix]

I currently have a custom sea-life power compact. (1-65 W white, 1-65W actinic, 2 moon-lights). What would be the best schedule to run them on? I can't really have them only on when I am around since I wake up early, have class all day, and come back in the evening. I usually feed the tank when the lights come on and when the white light goes off. I currently have this schedule set up: 9:00 A.M. White on , 11:00 A.M. actinic on, 8:30 p.m. white off, 10:30 p.m.actinic off, 10:30 p.m. moonlights on, 9:00 a.m. moonlights off. That was the best schedules I could come up with some help from the LFS :| . What are the advantages / disadvantages of running longer/shorter periods? Also I have heard of people running acinics in the morning and the night before and after the white light, but isn't morning light different from evening light? I whish there was a standardized lighting pattern that came with the lights.

[Mike O'Brien]

the thing is that water absorbs light. the longer wavelenghs are absorbed first, the red and yellow. so depending on depth, things in the ocean can be exposed to just the blue light. Things living at the surface or in shallow water receive the direct sunlight around 6700 k . Remember that white light contains all colors.