4 - 8 - 4 - 8 Lighting Cycles

[CoralClasher]

The growth I’m noticing reminds me of growing hydroponic plants. For those plants I ran lights 24/7 til they got the size I wanted then cut the lighting schedule down to make them produce fruit. I wonder if this light schedule triggered a budding response? Maybe this light schedule should only be used to trigger a budding cycle then get back to longer schedule?

 

[Pancake]

How’s it going 4-8/4-8 light cycle peeps! Just checking in to update on my double photoperiod light schedule 6/6/6/6. I just hit my 15 month since I changed to the double photoperiod light schedule. To report, there does not appear to be any adverse affects on fish, corals, or inverts. The fish are healthy and seem to enjoy the off and on cycle of the lights. I can observe that the corals definitely seem to go into a respiration state when the lights turn off during the day as they display tentacles and dark time feeding response. I tried to test this by opening my blinds or turning on ceiling lights and the corals responded by not going into respiration on days I would do this. Also I am continuing to increase par, but having a mixed reef makes it harder as soft corals like cloves and xenia in my tank seem to dislike the increasing intensity of the lights. Not sure if it’s because I’m not giving them enough time to acclimate or if it’s because I’m increasing too much at one time, but the soft corals immediately showed signs of stress when I increased the lights despite my attempts to ramp up slowly. They are now slowly recovering to their former glory. I tested with a par meter and it was only showing 140 par for these softies so I’m guessing the stress was related to increasing the par too rapidly. Currently my sps are getting 250-300 par and growing and coloring well. I feel confident that if I increase the par I would get improved results, but I havent increased the par as I’m waiting for the cloves (favorite coral) to recover. I might just take them out in the name of science ! I am dying to see if remarkable growth could be achieved from the benefits of double photoperiod and double respiration . My goal is to slowly increase par to the point that the corals will get it’s growth optimizing light crammed into the 4 hour period and rest for 8 hours so that I can squeeze in another 4 hours of photosynthesis and then respiration. So far this seems to be achievable In terms of livestock health. whether this will lead to improved growth will have to be seen. Summer is here and I am happy to report that the double photoperiod schedule a really helping to keep the temperature from climbing. I’m noticing about 2-4 degree benefit (Using led) from running this schedule.