12h Photoperiod -- What are your thoughts?

[PhreeByrd]

Where most of our fish and corals come from, the length of the day and night are very close to equal... so I run a 12/12 hour cycle with ramp up/down.

I can't fathom why anybody would not try to simulate as closely as possible the natural environment of their tank's inhabitants.

 

[Retro Reefer]

I also run 12 hours 9am-9pm.. mine are on a bell curve with a 4 hour ramp up, 4 hours at peak and a 4 hour ramp down.

 

[Dburr1014]

1 hour blue, ramp up 5 hours to peak, peak 2 hours, ramp down 5 hours, 1 hour blue. 14 total hours. But I feel the blue doesn't do much (I like to watch at this time) and ramping up and down for so long it is kinda like how the sun works.

 

[curiouser]

I don't think that we should completely mimic mother nature as almost everything we have is artificial. But I still agree that in some ways we should. But not lighting.

The critters we care for in our tanks evolved in nature and were harvested from nature. We try to mimic nature re pH, Ca, Mg, temp, etc. Makes sense to me to mimic nature as best we can re lighting, even though imperfectly.

 

[d2mini]

I use a very short ramp up/down with a longer "daylight" period. The sun may not be directly overhead, but if you look at how long it takes for the sun to get through dawn/dusk and for it to go from what appears to be complete darkness to complete light, it's not very long at all. Having several hours of just blue light with varying intensity on each end of the daily schedule seems too long to me.

I start at 10am and by 11am I'm pretty much at my daylight spectrum with just some overall intensity to increase by 12 pm. And reverse in the evening.

 

[Halal Hotdog]

Are any of you running 12 hours with no ramping? 12 hours of consistent intensity? Are any of you having algae issues due to this elevated photo period? Any significant changes in coral growth going from 8 hrs to 12 hrs?

 

[tgbaby]

I run 12 hours. Halides. Come at me bro.

Are you running any supplemental lighting? Can you detail your bulb selection and photoperiod? Thanks

 

[BoomCorals]

Are you running any supplemental lighting? Can you detail your bulb selection and photoperiod? Thanks

No supplemental. Halide and T5 don’t need supplements unless it’s to add something for your viewing pleasure.

20k 250w hamilton bulbs and ballasts right now. 12 hours on, not much to it.

 

[jda]

I think that we can leave nature out of this since people only pick and choose the parts of nature that they want to use and ignore the rest... choosing 12 hours and ramping, but then use a cut spectrum light source with 1/10 the output that a coral gets in nature instead of choosing a source that is more like nature seems like a mixed message to me. We all do this, it seems.

All of the most recent research from Dana says to view this as an accumulation... so 12 hours at 300 PAR might be the same as 10 hours at 360. I run 11 hours of full scale on/off MH with tons of PAR and everything thrives. You should be plenty OK with either as long as the accumulation is enough. There are some retail shops that run 14 hours at very low PAR since they have a lot of hours to get the PAR in there.

 

[mike werner]

I don't train my lights to my corals.i train my corals to my lights.my lights come on full at 4pm and go off at 330 am est.no ramp up or down just on.no sense in having the lights on when no one is home to enjoy the tank.corals and fish don't have watches and adjust the same way you would if you moved half way around the world to live.i have mostly sps with a few lps and some zoas.for those who have seen my tanks know I have great growth and coloration.i really don't think all these fancy light schedules make any difference what so ever.i'm sure "one of those reefers" will chime in and tell me i'm wrong but i'll skip that post and keep doing what I have always done.

 

[hart24601]

I have done shorter photoperiods like 5hr peak, 14hr peak, long ramps slow ramps later in the day photoperiods for my viewing... and if keeping the daily light amount (par * hours) around the same I have never noticed any real changes at all over the years. Iowa winters are dark by 5pm so there isn't that indirect light then, but room lights in general are used more so who knows the total effect other than I don't notice anything.

If something seems to be working well for you, or a photoperiod that lets you enjoy the tank more such a delayed one, awesome! There are so many other things to try and optimize in this hobby with our systems that ime this one is pretty far down the list.

 

[Jeremy K.A.]

My 5 gallon nano had the lights on it 24/7 for almost 3 years and did excellent, unfortunately my old phone had the pics of it and dried out. But if my nano could handle light all the time I think any tank should be fine with 12+ hours. Mostly personal preference imo

 

[TheBackAndForth]

I don't train my lights to my corals.i train my corals to my lights.my lights come on full at 4pm and go off at 330 am est.no ramp up or down just on.no sense in having the lights on when no one is home to enjoy the tank.corals and fish don't have watches and adjust the same way you would if you moved half way around the world to live.i have mostly sps with a few lps and some zoas.for those who have seen my tanks know I have great growth and coloration.i really don't think all these fancy light schedules make any difference what so ever.i'm sure "one of those reefers" will chime in and tell me i'm wrong but i'll skip that post and keep doing what I have always done.

Mike!!--you are a night owl! I have a severely delayed sleep phase too

I don't ramp--just run about 11 hours a day from about 3 pm to 2 AM. I have a timing strip with 11 hours pushed in. If i want to change my photoperiod, I give it a little spin. Great growth. I would need to see peer reviewed research to make me change this--nothing anecdotal.

 

[Halal Hotdog]

My 5 gallon nano had the lights on it 24/7 for almost 3 years and did excellent, unfortunately my old phone had the pics of it and dried out. But if my nano could handle light all the time I think any tank should be fine with 12+ hours. Mostly personal preference imo

You can't talk about having lights on for 24/7 without going into detail . Can you go into depth about the light and setup you said? Corals? Fish? Everything? I would never try it, but find it very fascinating.

 

[Wiskey]

I run mine 12.5 hours right now, with full T5 light for 10. My tank is a little light on bulb count though, and the SPS would like two more, but I like LPS too and it would make them bleach so I have this balance for now.

I've always run long photo periods, even my old 180 with MH had the XM10K's on for 10 hours.

Whiskey

 

[Jeremy K.A.]

You can't talk about having lights on for 24/7 without going into detail . Can you go into depth about the light and setup you said? Corals? Fish? Everything? I would never try it, but find it very fascinating.

Depth probably 20" maybe, I never measured it lol. One Fiji blue devil damsel, lots of corals including mushrooms, green leather, toadstool, Kenya tree, gsp, Blue ridge coral, a pocillopora for awhile, and a gold coral banded shrimp. Oddly my shrimp died late last year and within days of him dying the whole tank went downhill, mainly a lot of film algae on the glass. Which is why I am going to tear it down and start over, same tank but new rocks, corals, etc. It definitely blew peoples minds when I told them about the lighting lol Oh and also I never ran a skimmer on it

 

[tripdad]

Are any of you running 12 hours with no ramping? 12 hours of consistent intensity? Are any of you having algae issues due to this elevated photo period? Any significant changes in coral growth going from 8 hrs to 12 hrs?

I do not use a ramp cycle at all,have in the past. I do not have any abnormal algae cycles. I get an occasional spot but it goes away or i simply remove it manually. I am not particularly high par FWIW, T5's. I use a 12.5 hour cycle.

 

[DesertReefT4r]

The thing most people don't realize is when you run your lights on a certain photo period it's consistent. Out in nature light is never consistent, there can be days and days in a row that due to cloud cover, and other weather the actual intensity and amount of sun light the reef receives is minimized. So in reality even though In nature a reef may receive a longer photo period of time on a good summer day than we light our aquariums. When averaged out how much light and intensity a reef receives over the course of a year, compared to our consistently lit tanks you will be surprised at the difference.

Now the big question is can we improve on nature? That's the million dollar question

Good point and love your avatar.

 

[curiouser]

I've read that ramping up and down makes the fish happier. Does anyone know of objective data to support or deny this?
When my wife wakes me abruptly from a sound sleep it takes me a while to feel well, so I ramp for the fish. I know this anthropomorphizing the fish is nonsense.

 

[PhreeByrd]

I've never seen any data that supports the fish being happier. I don't even know what that data would look like. Fish telling jokes, break dancing, eating waffles and pop-tarts?

I just know that with the exception of subterranean and deep sea creatures, it's natural for all living things on this earth to have a daily adjustment to light intensity. It seems like the natural thing to do for reef-adapted creatures, just as it is for humans.