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Opinions on lighting and heating parameters

Fish Boss

Fish Boss

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So I’ve had a few thoughts that I’ve been occasionally thinking about, and wanted to get everyone else’s opinions.

1. Lighting schedule: what is your preferred lighting schedule? What do you think is a good length of time to have your lights on? Does intensity, relatively speaking, affect min/max duration of light schedule? Also, one question I thought of during the time change, do you adjust your lighting schedule during time changes?

Right now I run my lights for 12 hours a day. I feel like I’m towards the max end for duration. I like this schedule because the tank is lit up around the time I wake up, and is lit up until the evening, so I have a good amount of time to view the tank. My corals seem to react pretty well to this schedule. The RBTA I picked up from @DaddyHook I noticed started to shrivel up towards the end of the light cycle, reached out to him and discovered he was running his aquarium for just 9 hours, so I adjusted my light on that side of the tank and have been slowly extending the hours each day. I think its almost fully acclimated to my schedule now.

As far as daylight savings goes, I had my lighting schedule set at 8-8, but decided to change it to 7-7 after the time change to not mess with the corals circadian rhythm. Does this matter/ have any effect?

2. Temperature: what temperature do you keep your tank at? What do you think is a safe range to keep your tank at? Whats the optimal range to keep your tank at? Is pinpoint stability important to you, or do you think some fluctuation is good? Do you think slightly higher or slightly lower is more harmful?

I always hear the 78-82 degree range is great. I’ve also heard that some fluctuations can actually make coral more hardy, and make them more resistant to heavier fluctuations during emergencies, such as power outages, or extremely hot days. When I first set up my current build, my single heater struggled to keep a perfectly stable temp. It would drop to, iirc, mid 77 at night, if it was really cold/if we left the door open for airflow, and would slowly rise to mid 81 or so in the afternoon. Corals looked fine, but I would not be comfortable with this much fluctuation, this quickly, in the long run. I’ll have to double check what my heaters are set to now, but I believe I have one set at 78, and one at 80, and my tank is very stable at 78.2-78.7 at any point in the day when I check it.

Just some shower thoughts I’ve been having, would love to hear everyone elses opinions
 
I think you're going to get a lot of differing opinions, as there's no one correct answer. Running above 78 degrees does seem outside the norm though, and some folks run specific systems down to 75-ish.

Personally I run 77-78 degrees, and lighting for 10.5 hours a day with around 4 hours of full spectrum.
 
Invictus said:
I think you're going to get a lot of differing opinions, as there's no one correct answer. Running above 78 degrees does seem outside the norm though, and some folks run specific systems down to 75-ish.

Personally I run 77-78 degrees, and lighting for 10.5 hours a day with around 4 hours of full spectrum.
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Definitely, different opinions/answers is what I’m looking for! Thanks for your feedback
 
Like Austin says, you're gonna get a million answers - and that's because a million ways works. I have found that Corals generally are very, very adaptable to lighting. I run pretty crazy light in my tank, and can count on one hand the number of times a coral has been harmed because of too much of it. I have mostly Acropora, but I also have a lot of "easy" low light corals that get absolutely blasted and are very happy - red digi that gets 900+ PAR, several different mushrooms that get 350-500, a sinularia getting 400, a bunch of zoas getting 500+, some euphyllia that get 625.

The only corals that I've hurt with light are Gonis and Chalice - but only specific specimens. Mushrooms are grumpy at first but once they adjust they are very happy, which is true of most everything else (in my tank). My nutrients aren't even that high anymore, although maybe that helps "protect" the corals from the light? Who knows!

My lights are on for 15 hours a day (6am to 9pm) with peak lighting steady for 9 hours.


I am of the opinion that keeping temperature dead flat is setting your corals up for stress should the temp ever fluctuate. My temp generally swings between 76 and 78 each day, but during the summer it has swung by as many as 5-6 degrees in one day, and I never noticed any issues. I think temp stability is overrated also, to some extent. Corals in the ocean see much, much bigger swings than this in many places daily or seasonally.
 
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derek_SR said:
Like Austin says, you're gonna get a million answers - and that's because a million ways works. I have found that Corals generally are very, very adaptable to lighting. I run pretty crazy light in my tank, and can count on one hands the number of times a coral has been harmed because of too much of it. I have mostly Acropora, but I also have a lot of "easy" low light corals that get absolutely blasted and are very happy - red digi that gets 900+ PAR, several different mushrooms that get 350-500, a sinularia getting 400, a bunch of zoas getting 500+, some euphyllia that get 625.

The only corals that I've hurt with light are Gonis and Chalice - but only specific specimens. Mushrooms are grumpy at first but once they adjust they are very happy, which is true of most everything else (in my tank). My nutrients aren't even that high anymore, although maybe that helps "protect" the corals from the light? Who knows!

My lights are on for 15 hours a day (6am to 9pm) with peak lighting steady for 9 hours.


I am of the opinion that keeping temperature dead flat is setting your corals up for stress should the temp ever fluctuate. My temp generally swings between 76 and 78 each day, but during the summer it has swung by as many as 5-6 degrees in one day, and I never noticed any issues. I think temp stability is overrated also, to some extent. Corals in the ocean see much, much bigger swings than this in many places daily or seasonally.
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Love the lighting schedule, thats pretty nuts! That is very eye opening to see that you have had very little damage with those parameters/schedule
 
My recommendation is:

11-hour lights on with a peak intensity for 5 hours.

Target 77-78 F water temp. Warmer in the summer up to 80-81 F is not an issue. Temp swings are not an issue but can become one if too high, 82 F and above, or too low, below 75 F.

I bail on the daylight savings Q, but my guess is better to not change, but most including myself change for convenience.
 
Alexander1312 said:
My recommendation is:

11-hour lights on with a peak intensity for 5 hours.

Target 77-78 F water temp. Warmer in the summer up to 80-81 F is not an issue. Temp swings are not an issue but can become one if too high, 82 F and above, or too low, below 75 F.

I bail on the daylight savings Q, but my guess is better to not change, but most including myself change for convenience.
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I agree to both sides on the daylight savings Q, overall I dont think it is a very big deal, and the coral probably adapt fairly easy. I’d love to hear more feedback from others on this, it was my first thought that spurred this thread
 
Whole lotta doesn’t matter here. A lot of reefs run so many different settings successfully, plus there’s so many different water parameters, you’re never going to know what set of values are better. Unless you’re actively trying to spawn coral or specifically trying to start a grow out facility, staying in the normal range of “9-12 hours of light with 5-9 hours of peak,” you’ll probably not notice that much difference. I myself run 12-14 hours a day, 7 hours peak. Adjusting to daylight saving probably doesn’t do squat if you also aren’t mimicking moonlight cycles at night.

Unfortunately, when one person swears by a certain method, I don’t doubt them, but their method probably isn’t repeatable at a different location doing the exact same thing. If there’s ever an example of that, they’ll be able to make a lot of money. ;) Even my 4 sets of systems, though similar run slightly different.

So, long winded answer. Stay in a range, find the best settings that work out for your life style and happy growth level and move on to enjoying your coral.
 
RandyC said:
Whole lotta doesn’t matter here. A lot of reefs run so many different settings successfully, plus there’s so many different water parameters, you’re never going to know what set of values are better. Unless you’re actively trying to spawn coral or specifically trying to start a grow out facility, staying in the normal range of “9-12 hours of light with 5-9 hours of peak,” you’ll probably not notice that much difference. I myself run 12-14 hours a day, 7 hours peak. Adjusting to daylight saving probably doesn’t do squat if you also aren’t mimicking moonlight cycles at night.

Unfortunately, when one person swears by a certain method, I don’t doubt them, but their method probably isn’t repeatable at a different location doing the exact same thing. If there’s ever an example of that, they’ll be able to make a lot of money. ;) Even my 4 sets of systems, though similar run slightly different.

So, long winded answer. Stay in a range, find the best settings that work out for your life style and happy growth level and move on to enjoying your coral.
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Definitely! Just wanted to see what everyone was running these days. Seems like sometimes a specific parameter range is deemed perfect or right, then changes as time goes on, I.E. nitrates/phosphates. Its really cool seeing the drastically different ways that people run their reefs and achieve success!
 
My lights are on roughly from 12-1 to 10-11 give or take.. I want the lights on longer in the evening since Im home more at those times..Lights go off when I turn in for the night .. I run a modified David Saxby lighting which includes respite peaks during prime time hours with just a bit more white light preferred which make the fish pop..kinda looks like a gear rack at peak lighting with ramp up when lights first turn on..
Temp around 78 summer maybe 82 at the highest with two smaller wattage heaters on inkbird for redundancy if one goes out one can still get by without getting to low…
Separate temp controller that your heaters are plugged into are a vital piece of equipment!!
Pic is roughly the lighting at peak times
 

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Fish Boss said:
Herbivorous fish food company using harvested macro algae???
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As someone who grew up on a family farm in rural Illinois, I think this would all be very much cheating on what is called a farm for a money benefit, and therefore exactly the sort of thing farmers across the US would vehemently support as a way to screw the man!
 
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