Photo period for refuge w/ cheto

[virginiadiver69]

I will be getting my lighting for my fuge tomorrow. Please give me some advice on the photo-period. Is it the same as the display? I have heard about doing it opposite but I do not remember why. I guess some people run it 24 hrs?
P.S. This will be a display fuge where my eventual seahorses and mandarins will go, if that makes any difference.

[palawan]

I run my fuge lighting 24/7 using a Lights of America compact flourescent fixture. Works well. The reason why they run at opposite times is because of the ph factor. At night with the main tank lights off the ph will drop, so keeping the fuge light on the algae is suppose to keep the ph higher.

[virginiadiver69]

Will running lights 24/7 give the same pH stabilizing affect?

[virginiadiver69]

bump

[scunan]

I wonder how many other people run the lights on their fuge 24/7??

[josh holt]

i run my lights 24/7 on my fuge. on other tanks i have run my fuge lights the same as the tank lights and had no issues.

[Hop]

I used to but my chaeto began turning brown. After doing some reading around the board, this seems to be a common issue. It seemed that eight months to a year of running the fuge light 24/7 is when the bulk of people, including myself, began noticing the browning of the chaeto. Some countered this by adding iron to the tank. But I, followed other recommendations and I switched to running the fuge light ten hours at night and everything greened back up and is doing well.

[plyle02]

IMO, I run 14 hours, opposite light cycle to that of my main tank. I read somewhere that you get more growth when your macros have a dark cycle opposed to a 24-7 cycle. It works for me, my ph, and my chaeto started at the size of an orange, and now the size of 2 softballs. I also have green grape, I know they say it goes sexual when not lighting 24-7, never had a problem here, and it has grown like mad, as has my prolifera. BTW, I light my 20 gallon long with 135 watts of PC's....

[virginiadiver69]

Thank you everybody for the info. I think I will give the opposite light cycle method a try and go from there.

[Doureefa]

I have my tank set on opposite times, and I got great growth from the chaeto and the grape calps. Also the pH always remained steady between 8 and 8.2

[FishMachine]

opposite