Larry L
Valuable Member
Sunday morning pondering...
Way back when, we put our lights on plain old timers and they turned on and off at a certain time of day. Then we realized we could simulate a sunrise/sunset effect by turning some of the bulbs on and off at different times, or by using fancier timers that let the intensity ramp up and ramp down.
Now lots of people run their lights in ways that let them have all kinds of control over the light intensity throughout the course of a day, but I still see lots of lighting schedules that basically look like this:
Dana keeps showing us graphs of natural light over the course of a day that look like this:
So does it make sense we should be running our lights the same way? It's easy to set up something that's a close approximation, and you could get even closer if you felt like adding just a few more points:
I know that people like Jamie Craggs are looking how replicating seasonal light and temperature cycles, lunar cycles, etc., influence coral spawning, so it seems like we could be giving our tanks a more natural lighting experience.
Just curious whether there might be advantages to running our tanks with a more natural profile, or if there are reasons why a "flatter" profile might be better (or if it's just a carryover from when that's all we could manage).
For example, if you set the intensity of the flat spot at the point where photosaturation is going to happen anyway, does that just mean you're getting the most efficient use of the light you're providing? Or is there still some other benefit to the corals to have a more natural intensity change over the course of the day which would make the rounded profile more desirable?
Way back when, we put our lights on plain old timers and they turned on and off at a certain time of day. Then we realized we could simulate a sunrise/sunset effect by turning some of the bulbs on and off at different times, or by using fancier timers that let the intensity ramp up and ramp down.
Now lots of people run their lights in ways that let them have all kinds of control over the light intensity throughout the course of a day, but I still see lots of lighting schedules that basically look like this:
Dana keeps showing us graphs of natural light over the course of a day that look like this:
So does it make sense we should be running our lights the same way? It's easy to set up something that's a close approximation, and you could get even closer if you felt like adding just a few more points:
I know that people like Jamie Craggs are looking how replicating seasonal light and temperature cycles, lunar cycles, etc., influence coral spawning, so it seems like we could be giving our tanks a more natural lighting experience.
Just curious whether there might be advantages to running our tanks with a more natural profile, or if there are reasons why a "flatter" profile might be better (or if it's just a carryover from when that's all we could manage).
For example, if you set the intensity of the flat spot at the point where photosaturation is going to happen anyway, does that just mean you're getting the most efficient use of the light you're providing? Or is there still some other benefit to the corals to have a more natural intensity change over the course of the day which would make the rounded profile more desirable?
