8AM to 6PM - too little?

[Centerline]

I have a new set of Gen4 XR30 Pros over a tank at my office. I set them up about 3 weeks ago and used the "Radiant" profile from Ecotech @ 60% and put them into acclimation mode. Everything seems to be fine. This morning when I got to work at 6 and it was starting to get light out I started questioning if there would be any benefit to starting the ramp up at 6am and ramping down till 8pm. The light profile I'm using already has a fairly long ramp up/down with about 3 hours of full spectrum.

Thoughts?

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

If you have a par meter and a range of the par you want to work in, you could figure out your DLI. Or just play it by ear.
I personally at home enjoy the long slow ramp in the morning and at night. in the first and last hours I have VERY little light, but my peak time and intensity is set and therefore flexible. If I run into problems I reduce either intensity or time in the peak, rather than the ramps, just because I'm selfish and like the ramp. Nothing better than watching the corals wake up and the dragonettes spawn at "dusk".

Your eye will respond and receive information at quite low levels that equal extremely low "Par". As much as many may bash lux and footcandle meters in aquaria, Having one will really shed light on this as you can meter the amount of visible light in many situation like the bathroom, a cloudy day and your tank. I don't recommend an app to calculate par but it is handy to understand the light levels around you. IE a tank with 50000 lux will look dark outside on a sunny day, but a tank with 500 lux will be quite bright in the living room and contribute almost nothing to par. (sun @50,000lux = 943 par, sun at 500 lux = 5.3 par)
My .02

 

[Centerline]

If you have a par meter and a range of the par you want to work in, you could figure out your DLI. Or just play it by ear.
I personally at home enjoy the long slow ramp in the morning and at night. in the first and last hours I have VERY little light, but my peak time and intensity is set and therefore flexible. If I run into problems I reduce either intensity or time in the peak, rather than the ramps, just because I'm selfish and like the ramp. Nothing better than watching the corals wake up and the dragonettes spawn at "dusk".

Your eye will respond and receive information at quite low levels that equal extremely low "Par". As much as many may bash lux and footcandle meters in aquaria, Having one will really shed light on this as you can meter the amount of visible light in many situation like the bathroom, a cloudy day and your tank. I don't recommend an app to calculate par but it is handy to understand the light levels around you. IE a tank with 50000 lux will look dark outside on a sunny day, but a tank with 500 lux will be quite bright in the living room and contribute almost nothing to par. (sun @50,000lux = 943 par, sun at 500 lux = 5.3 par)
My .02

Based on your previous advice I do own a lux meter and as well as a par meter . How about the UV channels, cut em back and just run the blues for a couple extra hours?

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

I don't know how proven negative or positive the effect of the "uv" diodes we use are, save some are reporting difficulty with some colors (yellow), turning green
Its like having way too much actinic. (A convo for later)

Myself(and this could be completey wrong), in my low output ramps, I just select the pretty color. And at peak my leds are all even on all channels. So my ramp "look" is like three or four shades on the way up and down. My "Summer in Fiji" look. I go uv, blue, and white. Then peak.

I'm fairly certain in most fixtures there's not enough of any one frequency to damage a coral, save from prolonged or over exposure.

This may not apply to cheap fixtures naturally.