day - night timer

[tony1021]

might be a dumb question but here it goes...

I just bought a new timer for my tank so I won't have the worry of turning my lights on and off at the same time daily. However, I realize that although there are differnet outlets for daytime lights and night time lights there is no way to keep both lights off at night.

Am i suppose to leave my actinic lights on throughout the whole night or are the night time outlets for LED lights only?

With that said I guess I would have to connect my actinic and daylights to both daylight outlets and only plug my LED lights to the night time outlet. Which means my LED lights will be on ALL night?

 

[ezy33]

Can you identify the timer? The led lights draw very little power, if thats your worry.

 

[mfdrookie516]

led lights are there as "moon lights"... the moon will cast a very dim light in the water at night in the ocean, and those are to mimic that... you may need another timer though, because most people will turn on the actinics first, then the daylight bulbs, the turn them off in the opposite order

 

[tony1021]

the timer i have is a "Coralife Day-Night Timer". It consists of 8 outlets 4 are color coded (2 yellow and 2 blue) the othre 4 are constant power and not timer controlled.

I thought I was going to be able to plug in my daytime lights to daytime outlets and actinic lights to nightime outlets but I won't be able to because the way the timer works. My actinic lights would have to be on all night which I think shouldn't.

Thats why I ask if it is okay to leave my LED strip on all night. It lights up the tank a lot more than the single LED bulb thats part of my hood. The LED strip consist of about 20 LED Bulbs.

Thanks

 

[mfdrookie516]

leaving your led's on wont hurt anything, and they draw very little electricity, so you shouldnt have anything to worry about

 

[divedeep1689]

they built that led strip for your tank for night time lights its fine yes run them all night.

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

the timer i have is a "Coralife Day-Night Timer". It consists of 8 outlets 4 are color coded (2 yellow and 2 blue) the othre 4 are constant power and not timer controlled. ...

Yup... that timer/power strip lures folks in all the time.

You only really have one timer setting with that strip... when the yellow go on, the blue go off. When the blue go on, the yellow go off. Pretty useless if you're going for that dawn/dusk look.

I did see though that Coralife now has a "dual" timer power strip that appears to do what you want. But a cheaper, and probably more dependable option is to just get two separate mechanical timers from your local hardware store and plug them into a power strip.

And no... don't run your actinics all night. No issues running your LEDs all night though.

 

[tony1021]

i don't really care about how much power they draw as I'm sure it won't make a difference in my utility bill, lol. What does concern me is the amount of light in my tank throughout the whole night and the fact that I don't really get the dusk/dawn effect the product says you get.

Below is an image of what my tank looks like in the middle of the night.
The LED strip consist of 30 blue lights for a 20" deep tank.

 

[Wenty]

That's cool looking.