Lighting experiment......

Azurel · Feb 28, 2007

Well I started this yesterday and plan on seeing what effects if any positive or negative it will have on the corals and macro....Hopefully great for the corals and bad for the macro......Here it is....

I will start randomly turning off my halides 2 days a week and just leaving on the actinics for the whole day. A buddy of mine a few years ago would randomly keep his lights of 1 day a week to simulate cloudy or stormy days. While I never did find out what the out come was cause I bought his 125 cause he had to move. I figured this weekend I would try some something similar but without the no lights part. Yesterday I acclimated some frags I had gotten in the mail and left the actinics on and shut down the halides figuring that would ease the acclimation as these frag came from PC type lighting. I figured this was a good time to start......I will try and take pictures if I notice any effects but I have been real lazy on the picture tanking lately so I don't know how that part will go.....

Any ideas about it out there? You guys/gals can chime in also.....

MarvinsReef · Feb 28, 2007

sounds like a good experiment.. pls keep us posted on the effects...

Azurel · Feb 28, 2007

We shall see.....I have not idea of what effects I might see so the slate is clean for both positive and bad. The good thing is I can correct it as easy as I started, so it's not like adding a chemical or additive that needs to be removed asap.....

vetteman · Feb 28, 2007

I had some luck reducing lighting but the best results were from reducing lighting and using AZ-NO3 together.... I had hair algae on every piece of rock in my tank..... now it is almost hair free with just a few isolated patches

Azurel · Mar 5, 2007

OK after about halfway on the second day I discontinued this experiment....The zoas didn't seem to like it much and remained closed up and shrunk most of the day. I turned on the MH and after about an hour they all opened back up and looked like normal......Instead I might try the darkness method instead of the actinic method.....Will report how that goes.

BigBadZoaDaddy · Mar 9, 2007

Cool deal, I have done this also in the past more random than anything and never kept note Can't wait to see the out come? Will you have a "stock" for the experiment ie. some that stay regulare photo period to compair the other 2?

Sound great! BTW

Azurel · Mar 9, 2007

Naw just my one tank......I started the actinic way but they did not like that after the second random day. So next week I will start the no-light method and see what happens.