Lighting

[hoppershaun]

How long should I have my aquarium light on a day? I have just bought a intelligent light system that works 24 hours, having an hour of sunrise, a preset number of daylight hours, an hour of sunset and then moonlight for the rest of the 24 hours. Thing is, for the preset number of daylight hours I can choose either 5 hours, 8 hours or 14 hours. Which do you think I should use?

 

[triazole]

12 hours is a good compromise...7am to 7pm...
well, if you want to be perfect, u can set it based on the season too.

 

[JRagg]

Looks like you can't choose 12. I would go with 8 or 14, whatever you like the best.

 

[JeffreyL]

light

What is the watts per gallon of your lighting? That is the total watts of light divided by the gal size of the tank? That will help you decide how long to leave it on, right?? If it is less than 1 or 1.5 watts per gal, then you may want to go 14 hours. But with 2 hours of dawn & dusk, I bet the 8 will give suffient lights for plants without growing too much algae.

BTW, do you have live plants in your tank? If not, then the timing is not so important. You may just have to try a setting & see what happens.

BBTW, sounds like a really neat timer. Where did you get it??

 

[hoppershaun]

Got no live plants, my tank is just a 35litre so just got little plastic plants. I've got the light set at 14 hours, seems to be ok. The light is made by Reef One, fits into their aquariums; Bi-Orb and Bi-Ube (I have the Bi-Ube). Unfortunately they are not available in US, I'm from England so thats how I got mine. Wasn't cheap either, £50 (whatever that is in dollars!)

 

[JeffreyL]

light

Then 14 hours is fine, if you start to get more algae than you want (a bit is okay, even beneficial) then cut back on the time and/or get some otos to take care of the algae.

Let's see, 50 pounds is, um, in USdollars, uhhhh ....... not cheap. Just as you said!! Have fun, sounds like a neat set up!!