Fluval evo 13.5 lighting schedule

Defff21 · Apr 6, 2020

So my tank is fully cycled a few weeks I have it up about 2 months total.. I have a CUC some coral frags zoas, mushroom and 2 clown fish.

My question is what is the best lighting schedule? Without being too much that it builds up algae.. I've read that just blues are okay is this true? Is it preference?

Just curious because my 2 clowns I only have 2 days now.

Ron Reefman · Apr 7, 2020

Just blue can work, but the tank (especially the corals) will do better if you do add in some white. Your coral's algae uses blue spectrum to do photosynthesis which feeds the coral. But it also uses other spectrum (included in the white) to produce other chemicals and even pigments that give your coral their color.

I'd suggest the blue run at double the white for at least 6 to 8 hours at peak power. That gives the zooxanthellae the maximum amount of time to do the photosynthesis. If you do sunrise and sunset, they can be as long as you like.

JoshO · Apr 7, 2020

Ron Reefman said:
Just blue can work, but the tank (especially the corals) will do better if you do add in some white. Your coral's algae uses blue spectrum to do photosynthesis which feeds the coral. But it also uses other spectrum (included in the white) to produce other chemicals and even pigments that give your coral their color.

I'd suggest the blue run at double the white for at least 6 to 8 hours at peak power. That gives the zooxanthellae the maximum amount of time to do the photosynthesis. If you do sunrise and sunset, they can be as long as you like.

The only issue you have here is the lack of controllability on the Evo stock light, it's the one thing I'd love to change!
I'm personally holding off until the 4 month mark for corals, by that point I'm hoping most my second cycle will be done and I'll run into less algae issues. If you're concerned about algae outbreaks then have some vibrant on hand to tackle the issue as soon as you see it.
Regular cleaning and maintenance should help to keep algae at bay though, the corals you have are fairly low demand so I'd think 6-8 hours should be okay for them. I've got a timer on the plug for my Evo which I'm planning on having turn on at 2pm and running until 9pm, at which point I'll switch over to blues. You'll notice that whenever you switch the Evo lights off by the plug they turn back onto white regardless what setting you had them on when the lights went out