Lighting cycle and fish "sleep" time question

[GatorPharmD]

My aquarium is located in my home office, a room with panoramic windows and window treatments that prevent actual sun to come in to the room but light does come through. The fish have the natural sunrise and sunset cycle and they come out in the morning around 7 am as soon as there is enough light in the room.

The room gets dark after sunset. I like working in my office until about 9pm in the evening. I have three questions:

1. Is it stressful for the fish to have my office light on until 9pm in the evening after being out and about since 7 in the morning or so?
2. Should I adjust the aquarium light cycle to have a sunset around the time I finish in my office?
3. How many hours of lighting should I program for my aquarium light (Radion). This includes the slow increase in the morning and decrease in the evening.

Thank you.

[seapug]

If your office is lit by 3000 florescent bulbs or football stadium style lighting you might want to consider some shading over the tank in the evening, but ambient lighting in a room generally isn't a problem for the general light cycle on your tank.

As far as the lighting schedule on your fixture goes, you can arrange that just about any way you like to coordinate with your schedule as long as you give the tank 6-8 hours of full "daylight" at some point.

[Andrew]

Fish don't need 12 hours of sleep. The time from 9pm- sunrise is plenty for them to be in the dark. But you don't want to keep your tank lights on from say 6am-9pm. That's too large of a window and you'll get some excess algae growth. A normal window is to leave the tank lights on for 7-8 hours. I don't get home til normally 3 or so I personally keep my lights on from 2-10pm. That way by the time I'm home, the corals are fully opened the I can enjoy the tank when I walk in.

[GatorPharmD]

Thank you for the prompt reply and information.

[All6Fish]

we do the same thing here, our tank goes on at noon and goes into moon light setting at 842pm so we can enjoy the tank while sitting in bed talking about our day.

[GatorPharmD]

I already made the programming changes to my Radion. I appreciate all the comments.