day/night lights

[AdamHorton]

I have a Nova Extreme Pro lighting system on my tank. I don't have any corals in there yet that can use it, but I've heard a couple of different things on how people use the capability for day and night lights and I'd like to know what people here do:

These are some really old pictures of the lighting system.
Day Lights:
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/daylights.jpg
Night Lights:
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/nightlights.jpg

Do you have the day lights on for 8 hours or so, then the night lights on the rest of the day? Or do you do something else that involves them both being on during the "day"?

 

[cooltop]

I have where my night lights come on 1 hour before the day light come one and the night lights stay on all day with the day lights and night lights stay 1 hour on after the day light goes off. I also have corals .

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

Your "night lights" aren't really night lights - they're actinic lights. They're the same as your "day lights" but are just putting out light in a different color/spectrum than your "white" lights. You don't want to run actinic lights all the time - you want to run them in conjunction with your white lights. Most folks that want to simulate a dawn/daylight/dusk cycle do something like what cooltop mentions. Now if you're talking the small LED "night lights" - those are OK to leave on 24/7.

Just to give you an idea, here's my setup...

9:30am - actinics on
10:00am - 10k (daylights) on
8:00pm - 10k (daylights) off
9:00pm - actinics off

I also have 2x 1/2W LED blue "nightlights" that stay on 24/7.

 

[juice28]

I agree with MR Nelson, "night lights" are nothing more than small LED lights. not your actinic or "blue" Fluorescent lights. my actinic's are on the longest, like Kurt Nelson's set up, 930 actinic on, 10 ish 10k's on, 9 ish 10k's off 10 ish actinic's off. My light cycle is a little long but ive read anwhere from 10-14 hrs total. Mine have independent stiwches but only one power cord so if I put them on a timer, both will come on. Im actually planning on adding a single fixture pwr cmpct with 420 actinic so I can put them on a timer and have my single actinic come on then my dual bulb power compact ill probably switch out the actinic for a 50/50 and leave the 10k