Lighting procedure.... sunrise/sunset effect..please help..

[stnmtn01]

I just bought a dual strip aqualight 130watt ( 1-10000k daylight and 1-actinic) for my 29g. Planning on making it a reef/fish system. Currently has 25lbs of live rock, 3 sea anemones, percula clown, 2 domino damsels, 1 striped damsel, 5 snails, and 4 blue hermit crabs. I need to know what the procedure would be on turning the lights on and off for the sunrise and sunset effect. Do I turn off one first for sunset? vice vera for sunrise? Or turn both on/off same time? please help..thanks

[HoopsGuru]

Assuming you have two switches, you should turn the actinic on first....then 10k and simply reverse for sunset (turn 10k off, then actinic). The easiest way is to just buy two timers and set each separately. I would have a space of about 2 hours or so for "sunrise" and "sunset".

[stnmtn01]

yes i do have 2 switches for each..I can turn them on/off right after each other?..There is no delay time between each light?

[Brisc0]

Agreed. My blues come on at 7 a.m., then two of the 4 whites a 8 a.m. followed by the other 2 whites a 10 a.m. two whites shut down at 6:00, then 7:00, then my blues kick off at 8:00 and my moonlites kick in.

[stnmtn01]

I read this off of petsolutions.com....now im confused to who's right...

While the reef inhabitants would be perfectly content with just an actinic blue light, reef keepers would be disappointed with the appearance of the aquarium. The human eye is designed to use the yellow/red spectrum, so blue lighting will appear very "dim" to the eye. To the reef critters, blue light is high noon, so actinic bulbs really should not be used to simulate a sunrise/sunset with other daylight bulbs. The "bright" daylight bulbs should come on first, then the actinic.

[Brisc0]

If im inadvertently kicking off high noon at 7:00 a.m. I can tell you that nobody in there seems to mind LoL

[Biggen]

My lights work like this:

PC 03's come on at 9:00 a.m.
20K MH come on at 10:00 a.m.

20K MH go out at 8:00 p.m.
PC 03's go out at 9:00 p.m.

As you can see, the entire photoperiod is 12 hours. However, the insense MH light is only lit for 10 hours.

[SquishyFish]

How about throwing another kink in the works. Moon lights!

[WarOrks15]

well my moonlights kick on right after the 03 turn off. the tank is never with out light. but i have seen that some of my corals once the moon lights have been one for a few ours start to open up again. they just happon to be place right in the center of the beam of light from the moon light. it is kinda cool.

[Wally]

My 10k pc lights come on and go of 1 1/2 hours after/before my actinics