Light Question

[UDJustin]

I run my lights for about seven hours a day I have corals in the tank so i know the lighting schedual is important. Just thougth I would ask how long everyone elses light cycle was?

[MechanicalEngineer]

What sort of corals do you have?  If you have SPS, you may need a longer light cycle to keep the colors up. 

From what I've read, corals can only use 6 hours of light...the rest is just wasted.  If you wanted your corals to just grow and grow, you would do 6 hours lights on, 6 hours lights off, repeat.

After 6 hours, as long as you're not having algae or bleaching issues, it's mostly just for our enjoyment. 

[UD Flyer]

I have my lights on for 8 hours from 2 P.M. until 10.  After what Reef'd up said; I’m definitely going to change that to 4 until 10, less energy used is less energy I have to pay for.

[Riderc82]

I was just reading about the lighting schedule the other day on RC, it didn't give a specific amount of time but it did say corals can only absorb so much light in a day and anything after that is essentially a waste.

[MechanicalEngineer]

Here's an interesting article sorta pertaining to light schedule.  It discusses amount of light related to animals spawning in the reef aquarium.

I'll try to find where I read about the 6 hour schedule.

http://www.breedersregistry.org/Articles/v1_n3_tyree/tyree.htm

[MechanicalEngineer]

This probably confuses the matter more, but a VERY interesting paper on light intensity and photoperiod versus calcification rates.  If you're not big into statistics, just skip through most of it and look at the pretty pictures (ie, charts.)

http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/209/17/3413