Blue moon lights on during the night?

[saltlife757]

Does anyone run their blue lights at night? I was thinking about running my blue moon lights on a very low intensity at night but was concerned if that would give me an algae problem or hurt future corals.

 

[SteveSTL]

I used to but since I switched to the Kessil don't have the option anymore. It won't cause any problems and some controllers actually will ramp the brightness up and down to mimic the lunar cycle.

 

[saltlife757]

I used to but since I switched to the Kessil don't have the option anymore. It won't cause any problems and some controllers actually will ramp the brightness up and down to mimic the lunar cycle.

Cool thanks. I like having the blue lights on because they look really good. I Just didn't want to over do it. My lights are 165 watts, but I can control the brightness settings. So I was thinking about leaving the blues on the lowest level over night

 

[pondman]

You could just use after market moonlights that way you don't have to keep messing with intensity settings.

 

[R_C]

You could just use after market moonlights that way you don't have to keep messing with intensity settings.

+1
That way you don't have to run your regular light all day long. Save some energy as well :)

 

[djbetterly]

I've been running two truelumen LED's at night for some time now, they are quite bright and light up the tank nicely. However, I've been having a lot of algae problems and I'm beginning to think that the moonlights are contributing. My nitrates are 4-5ppm and PO4 .04-.06. I've cut my lighting period back now and killed the moonlights. We'll see what happens.

 

[rjl45]

I have a dedicated 3w blue led, running on a dedicated 300mA dimmable driver. It is set to dim according to the moon phase, using my bluefish controller. At "full moon" it is set to 40% (which is approx 15%-20% of what the 3w LED can put out if fully powered). I have not seen any adverse affects due to the moonlight. I don't think it has enough intensity to do anything other than shine some light on the reef.

I could see if someone were to use their primary lights at a mid level intensity, that it could cause problems, by letting the photo period run too long.