How long is too long to run your lights on your saltwater reef aquarium?

[ClownSchool]

I run a cheap, weird lighting system. I use a Fluval marine LED bar on a 13 hour managed schedule with a six hour peak. In addition, I run a second Marineland *pro* LED bar that isn’t on a managed schedule running ten peak hours of blue and six hours of peak white.
Ironically, I’m picking up a par meter later today. I’ll update this to let you all know how it works.

Okay. I’ve run the par meter and I’m pleasantly surprised.
At the bottom of my tank the meter reads between 150-200, front to back, both at the left and right end of the tank. At the top of my rock work, the par is between 340-400 par from the center of the tank and working out to the ends. And, at the end of the tank, by the frag rack on the right of the pictures, it’s a solid 210.
So, for $360 of new lighting covering a four-foot long tank, that’s not too bad!

 

[a4edwin]

I run mine for 16 hours two xr15’s gen 4 max intensity is 40%.Start ramping up from 7 to 11am. Then it ramps down from 7 to 11.