Moonlight or No Moonlight...that is the question

reefobsessed

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Would like to get your feedback on this subject. Is moonlight benificial to the corals, fish etc, or is it for our viewing pleasure. Is it better to have a dark period as a rest period. Anyone done any research on this?
 
I don't run moonlights anymore. I get better feeding response from my corals if they are in the dark. I don't think there is any benefit to the moonlights.
 
I'm not sure if there is any benefit,, other than appearance. I have mine shut off at midnight. Once I had them stay on till 5 for a few days. I had a different algae start growing so I set it back.
 
No benefit to moonlights imo unless your trying to breed, I believe moonlights can help trigger fish to breed, I wouldn't use them everyday though, What I did was look on a calendar and checkout the moon phases and whenever there's a full moon I turned the moonlight on, it's just something I did lol seemed natural haha.
 
Thanks everone, thats the info I was looking for. Now another question...do you feed the corals when lights are out?
 
i tried them and discontinued them, the darker the better. Most moonlights are blue LED's that are actually nothing like real moonlight, not sure why they are even called moonlights. I did have some on an older PC light that were decent, they were very low light white LED's, you couldn't even tell if they were on unless it were near pitch black in the room. Fish need dark to sleep, without it they get stressed. Corals need very low or to almost 0 light to absorb the energy they have gathered from light. So giving them some strange blue spectrum all night could actually be deadly after a while. I tested the blue type on fish and corals on different tanks with the same results.
Fish were very on edge, corals got stressed and growth slowed. While they may be okay as a waking and sleeping light, to gradually increase the light giving a more natural lighting period, i wouldn't run them much in the am (30 min or so) and only an hour or so at night. They are certainly eye grabbers though to see corals all glowing under blue led sticks.
This would be good for a small lighting break period in a store during peak hours of business, makes people ask questions, and shows off the fluorescing corals.
 
i tried them and discontinued them, the darker the better. Most moonlights are blue LED's that are actually nothing like real moonlight, not sure why they are even called moonlights. I did have some on an older PC light that were decent, they were very low light white LED's, you couldn't even tell if they were on unless it were near pitch black in the room. Fish need dark to sleep, without it they get stressed. Corals need very low or to almost 0 light to absorb the energy they have gathered from light. So giving them some strange blue spectrum all night could actually be deadly after a while. I tested the blue type on fish and corals on different tanks with the same results.
Fish were very on edge, corals got stressed and growth slowed. While they may be okay as a waking and sleeping light, to gradually increase the light giving a more natural lighting period, i wouldn't run them much in the am (30 min or so) and only an hour or so at night. They are certainly eye grabbers though to see corals all glowing under blue led sticks.
This would be good for a small lighting break period in a store during peak hours of business, makes people ask questions, and shows off the fluorescing corals.
I have just turned my moonlights OFF!!! Great info
 
I have 2 very small 3 led lights, I must say they are not bright at all. And can only see the fluorescent colors of the corals, can't see why it would do any harm
 
I run mine from 11pm, when my main lights go off. They turn off to complete blackness at 1am. I only run them because I like the look. It does seem that my sps has good pe during this period. It's more for me than the livestock.
 
I run mine from 11pm, when my main lights go off. They turn off to complete blackness at 1am. I only run them because I like the look. It does seem that my sps has good pe during this period. It's more for me than the livestock.

Same with me, I run mine 3 hours before my blue lights come on only so I can enjoy my tank in the morning. I like the looks of them. The tank still has no lights at all from 9pm to 9am.
 

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