Night time stress???

[HockeyRooster]

I have a 90 gallon with live rock and a sump. Tank has been running for about 6 months but all of the live rock and zoa are from my old tank which ran for over 2 years. banggai, Halloween crab and snails are from the previous tank also.

My lights come on at 3 pm and most days my foxface has something wrong. A tiny dot or two that look like ick, cuts/ scratches on his side or an issue with a fin. I have two cleaner shrimp and a cleaner wrasse who are often picking away at him-taking good care of him. By the time 5-6 pm comes around he looks great. No problems on his skin. Except the time he was cut/scratched but that went away in a few days.

I am beginning to think something is stressing him out at night. He hasn't found a place to hide at night even though there are plenty of places he fits (places I’ve seen him get into). He is usually at one of the front corners of the tank when the lights are out.

He eats very well and gets along with his tank mates which are
Banggai Cardinal
Cleaner wrasse
Two small clowns
Small mandarin
Snails
Hermits
Halloween hermit crab. I think the scratches might be from this guy. He’s pretty big.

I don’t turn my flow down at night.

Any insight to this?

 

[HockeyRooster]

Here are some pics of the cuts/scratches
Bottom pic is today.
Top is 10 days ago.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Does your tank ever go from dark to light or light to dark instantly, or is there a gradual changeover?

Jay

 

[HockeyRooster]

When the lights come on, the go from completely off to 100% on.
When they go off I have whites off and blue on for 1 hour then it goes off. This is just because I have black box lights and can control them any more.

The one caveat to light on is that it happens at 3 pm but I am in a room right beside the tank at 7 am so there is a bit of light from my office and I can see the shrimp as well as some of the fish (looking right now). There is also a window across the room that is a light source. Light comes in as early a 5 am in the summer and as late as 9 am (I’m pretty far north in Canada). It’s not a lot of light though

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Window light is fine for keeping the fish from going light to dark too suddenly, I just wanted to rule that out.
Jay

 

[HockeyRooster]

Window light is fine for keeping the fish from going light to dark too suddenly, I just wanted to rule that out.
Jay

Great, thanks Jay. Anything you can rule in?
Any other ideas? I am worried about too much flow at night or that something is botherIng him.
Or, Could this be a ph swing issue? I do have a fuge with cheato and a light that runs 12 hours starting after the blue light goes out.

 

[najer]

Just a thought, it gets natural daylight so it's body clock works to that, 6 hours in to it's body clock cycle your lights go "bam" 100%, I would freak as well!
You say you can go from white to blue at the end of the day, can you go from blue to white at light start up, soften the blow a bit? (I have a tank that I do this too manually.)

 

[HockeyRooster]

Najer- yes I can. I will make that change and see if it helps. Thanks

 

[HockeyRooster]

Just thought I’d give an update. I started the blue lights 30 minutes prior to the whites coming on now. I’ve also started turning the wave maker off at night.
The foxface seems better so thanks for the help!