Lighting at night

[jazztalker]

I have a question about lighting at night. I have a 75 gallon tank with a couple of fish and live rock (just kind of starting out). How long should I leave the light on each day? I usually turn it off during the day when I'm at work - I figure the room its in is lit ok. I like to turn the light on for a while at night, maybe 4 or 5 hours, but when I go to bed, I turn it off and the room its in gets super dark. Is this ok or should I be doing something different? Thanks!

[Civicman86]

Get a moonlight (in essence it is a blue led) has the same color range as the moon and is cool for veiwing the tank at night.

[schoeplein]

If you're not worried about lighting specific corals, increasing your coralline growth on your rock - lights should be kept on at least 8 hours a day to reflect natural sunlit times. As suggested above, a simple blue LED or two or four or ten works well for lighting the tank at night. Its not a necessity, but it does seem to chill out my fish and seems to help regulate their "active" and "non-active" times. Nighttime creatures you didn't know existed can be viewed with moonlighting as well. 8)

My canopy has two 120mm fans with blue LEDs -- this works well for me

[fishfreek]

Your best bet would be to get a cheap timmer from wal-mart or some other store. They are less than $5 and are fairly easy to set. This way your lights can come on and go off automaticly with out you doing anything. If you want to grow coraline or any other algae or have corals your going to need a much longer exposure time than just four or five hours. This will allow you to set your on time to be something like 10am and your off time to be 10pm. Then you will have the pleasure of viewing yoru tank in the evenings as well as have a good light exposure.

The moonlights are cool but arnt a requirement.

[jazztalker]

Thanks for all the advice, I appreciate it!