Light (how many hours per day?)

[babyduke]

After setting up a tank with live rocks, how many hours straight per day do I leave the light on?

 

[Adrinal]

I know when folks have huge amounts of lights the bluish ones are 12 hours and the daytime ones are 8 hours... so I assume your lights are, FO how about... 12 hours

the only consideration for you will be algea really... so even if you have ambient light... no light will be fine as well till you get fish..

So... whatever you like really.

Its corals n plants n stuff that need it.

 

[Landlocked]

It really varies. The only time you need light of any consistency is if you're keeping algae or invertebrates. Fish-only systems don't really need that much light, and fish aren't too choosy.

For times, I would leave your lights on for a good 12 hours a day. However, you can vary this amount as you wish.

If you have really strong lights, be sure that they're open, or they have a fan, or some other way to keep them from overheating the water.

 

[ostrow]

If he's got liverock he wants corraline or why have it? Start slowly!!! Start with 3-4 hrs and work your way up...

But we really need to know what kind of lights.

 

[Landlocked]

Metal Halitides are much stronger lights than fluorescents, and they should be kept on for shorter periods at first.

Fluorescents aren't as strong (assuming you don't have HO or VHO lights), and they can be kept on for longer times.

If you are changing/upgrading your system, especially from fluorescents to metal halitides, you should be sure that you don't have the new lights on as long as the old ones! If so, you stand a possibility of "shocking" your fish and/or invertebrates by providing too much light!

 

[ostrow]

Heck, I changed from 6500K to 10K MH and cut the time on from 10hrs to 2, adding an hour per day until I got to 7, then waited a week, added an hour a day until back to 10.

I had a lot of bleaching of corraline, only just now coming back. But coming back not all purple as before, getting brilliant greens and reds and oranges in addition to purple.

Well, you have lots of info now depending on what lights you have!

 

[Great Lakes]

If you have just the live rock, you can run 12 hours pretty easy. If you run just flourescents, keep it in the 6500 to 10,000 spectrum and you should get plenty of coraline, {purple}, algae.

GL