Lighting Question?

[ilikethesea]

How long should I leave my lights on in one day?

Will

[Uncle Salty 05]

Kind of depends on your lighting and what is being kept.
10-12 hours is pretty standard.

[chimmike]

I keep mine on about 8hrs.

[fufu]

If you are planning to keep coral, there is a thread floating around reef central that talk about a shorten light period is better for your coral. About 5-6 hours a day to stimulate the how the Sun is intense only for a few hours and gradually decline.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1582958

[1DeR9_3Hy]

^^^ This is assuming of course you can match the intensity of natural sunlight, with the same spectrum for which each coral is found in the wild.

Its a cool idea, but almost impossible to do because most of the corals we keep come from very different regions of the reef zone. Some see more blue light, some see more daylight, and some are in between. Unless you can recreate all those spectrums with the same intensity of the sun, i say 8-12 hours a day is a good guess.

I keep mine on 8 hours a day and i see great growth with my softies/lps. 6 bulb T5 fixture.

[GW81]

main lights 8 hours, actinics come on an hour before and go off an hour afterwards.