DT in an area that can never be totally dark

[drjreber]

Hello, everyone,

I have my 32 gal Biocube in a public area of the building where I work so I can share the learning experience with my college students. They LOVE it, and the several QR codes I post with info about the reef tank and natural reefs. Anyway, because it is in a public space, it is never entirely dark - there are always full ceiling lights until 10 or 12 pm, and at least the very low security-type lights after midnight. So, my question is, how many hours a night should I run my moonlights? Will leaving them on at night compensate for the white-hue of the room lights or just aggrevate the problem by adding additional light. Any ideas? My current light schedule has daylights on for 8 hours a day with sunrise/sunset lights a half hour before and after, and moonlights coming on during sunset and running for 3 hours. Or perhaps I should be running my moonlights all day to increase blues now that I am slowing adding small corals? Thanks for any help.

 

[exnisstech]

Moonlights are for us not the fish. I have never run any type of moon lights and my fish couldn't care less. Moon lights will not help corals as they are too weak. I would run the lights in the tank as needed for corals and viewing during the day. Your current schedule sounds fine. Running moonlights won't hurt anything but if there is ambient light all night I would not add more light to the tank at night. Fish will adapt to the ambient light and corals won't care. JMO

 

[djf91]

When I used to run moonlights a while back I never got the same amount of polyp extension at night as I did when they were off and the tank was totally dark. In my experience, the darker at night, the better. On wild coral reefs, it is almost completely dark at night.