Lighting Ramp up/down advice

[TwoLittleTangs]

Hi all,
I'm just curious how everyone's light schedules are set up. On my tank, every hour the light intensity ramps up a bit until it peaks for two hours and then ramps back down every hour until the night (the ideal is to simulate a rising and setting sun hour by hour, in my mind anyway). However, im wondering if keeping my LED's at a consistent setting for the day would be more beneficial to coral growth, such as:

moonlights
actinics for an hour
constant settings until noon
stronger lighting for a couple hours, after noon
back down to constant settings until the evening
actinics
moonlights

thanks in advance

[Ron Reefman]

Your coral's zooxanthellae do photosynthesis for 5 to 7 hours. As long as some of your sunrise and sunset is still intense light (close to the midday level) you should be OK. And just because it can do photosynthesis that long, doesn't mean it needs to, only that you and it will get maximum health and growth if it does. Intense light beyond 7 or 8 hours is of little benefit to growth of coral.

You might consider taking an hour or two off both sunrise and sunset and adding it to the midday. I now do a 5 hour sunrise, 4 hour midday and 5 hour sunset. But the last hour or 2 of my sunrise and the first hour or 2 of my sunset are still pretty strong.

Your coral isn't damaged by too long an exposure until you get into silly amounts of daylight (like more than 16 hours).

[ktownhero]

I have an AP700 with 2 T5s

1pm 10%
2pm 50% & T5s on
3pm - 9pm 70%
10pm 50% and T5s off
11pm - 2am moon light

So basically 8 hours of photosynthesis with 6 hours of peak and two hours of ramping. I'm slowly building up to this schedule. I have a mixed reef with mostly LPS and easy SPS
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[drtrash]

Hero, do you have any anemones ? 45% looks to bright for me but I don't have sps

[ktownhero]

Originally Posted by drtrash

Hero, do you have any anemones ? 45% looks to bright for me but I don't have sps

I have one rbta and it's been surviving but not thriving. I'm still figuring out the chemistry though.

I feel like when you first start light seems too high and so does flow. But eventually you realize these animals love lots of both 😀

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[drtrash]

Still working on chemistry as well still trying to get confident in how much light is needed. Started running at 50% but went down to 40% when I added the T5. Not sure how high to go with anemones I have browned a few but I think it was due to chemistry. Have a yellow go to brown still stings

[jda]

I am 10 hours on/off with MH at 100% with no dusk/dawn or moonlights. As long as you are not burning the coral at the peak, then you cannot really mess this up, IMO.

[TwoLittleTangs]

well i definitely have a good 4 hours of sunlight in between 11am and 2pm so maybe ill just leave my lighting schedule alone with its current simulations