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What is your light schedule like?
- Thread starter Mbodell
- Start date
My all VHO schedule.
11:00 am 2 x 160watt VHO super actinics on
12:00 noon 2 x 160watt VHO 50/50's on
2:00 pm 1 x 160 watt VHO Aquasun and 1 x 160 watt VHO Super Actinic on
8:00 pm 1 x 160 watt VHO Aquasun and 1 x 160 watt VHO Super Actinic off
10:00 pm 2 x 160watt VHO 50/50's off
11:45pm 2 x 160watt VHO super actinics off
11:00 am 2 x 160watt VHO super actinics on
12:00 noon 2 x 160watt VHO 50/50's on
2:00 pm 1 x 160 watt VHO Aquasun and 1 x 160 watt VHO Super Actinic on
8:00 pm 1 x 160 watt VHO Aquasun and 1 x 160 watt VHO Super Actinic off
10:00 pm 2 x 160watt VHO 50/50's off
11:45pm 2 x 160watt VHO super actinics off
Mbodell,
Two people with MHs weighed in...myself and newsalt....I said 6 hrs and he said 5.5. It's your personal preference how long you want to run them. The 12 hours on the actinics is just to get some type of semblance of night vs day that these organisms are used to since they come from equatorial waters where day/night are almost exactly 12 hrs each year round.
Two people with MHs weighed in...myself and newsalt....I said 6 hrs and he said 5.5. It's your personal preference how long you want to run them. The 12 hours on the actinics is just to get some type of semblance of night vs day that these organisms are used to since they come from equatorial waters where day/night are almost exactly 12 hrs each year round.
Well that is one problem you will see in this hobby. A lot of authorative guides. You're going to have to digest it all and cherry pick the info. In terms of lighting, the only true advice I would give is to emulate natural light as much as possible. Nature has made it that way and these organisms have evolved to make use of it. If you can somehow ramp up and down the lighting to do this, then you got the perfect system. If you can't, do the best that you can. You can probably do ok with 4 hours of MH light but then growth may suffer. You can probably push it to 10 hours of light and then heat becomes an issue. Experiment a bit but stay on the conservative side. There are so many ways to do things so don't let anyone tell you there's a right way. Well certain things are absolutes but this topic isn't one.
if you don't have them running yet does this mean your setting up a new system? using rodi water will sometimes dictate your lighting schedule for me it was better to start with less hrs at first. give us a little history of your tank
The 10k spectrum is supposed to be better for growth (but we don't like the color of it) so we use that when we're typically not home. Then around the time we're arriving home from work we switch the tank over to the more appealing to us 14k spectrum, which is better for color.
As for the "late hour" comment... we like keep our lights on in the evening when we're most likely to be home. Our neighbors may wonder, but no point in lights out at 8! We're just getting to the point where we can enjoy it at that hour.
As for the "late hour" comment... we like keep our lights on in the evening when we're most likely to be home. Our neighbors may wonder, but no point in lights out at 8! We're just getting to the point where we can enjoy it at that hour.