Lighting in a Coralife Biocube

[stevemaxwellrn]

Hello,

 

I am in the process of establishing a FOWLR in a 29 gallon Coralife Biocube. At this time I'm not planning on adding any coral...just some live rock, live sand, invertibrates, and a couple fish. The Biocube's instructions weren't very helpful about when to run the lights. It has the stock 2 fluorescent lamps (10,000k and Actinic) and 3 lunar blue LEDs. What would be a good lighting schedule?

 

Thanks!

--Steve

[HeyJay]

There's no perfect answer and you have more flexibility without coral... if you want a dawn/dusk effect you can do 10-12 hours for the actinic (say 10am-10pm) and 8 hours of the 10k (12pm-8pm). The LEDs could stay on all day, or just when the actinic is off.

[BluCrab]

You can add a timer and run both PC lights at the same time ,for no more than 8-10 hrs starting off. Or Run it the way HeyJay suggested .

 

Keep the LED's on all the time or just click it on when and when you want.

[GHill762]

yeah, if you're not growing coral then it can be pretty much whatever you want.. I wouldn't exceed 14 hours, but outside of that the only limitation is if you start having algae issues.

[wildbill79]

I ran with that same setup for quite a while in my BC14 and, as others have suggested, 8-10 hours is a good starting point. These lights will also support some coral as well. I had softies and some LPS in my tank with the PC setup. I also started a birdsnest high in my tank without any ill affects. But for the lighting schedule: 8-10 hours. I would start with 8 to reduce the amount of algae that will take hold. That was a piece of advice that was given to me, and I thought it was a good one. I always left the lunar LEDs on.

[HeyJay]

yeah, if you're not growing coral then it can be pretty much whatever you want.. I wouldn't exceed 14 hours, but outside of that the only limitation is if you start having algae issues.

 

 

There also may be possible heat issues if it's a closed up biocube... I remember the stock lights in my BC14 creating a good deal of heat, but it's an oceanic vs a coralife so maybe there is a difference

[GHill762]

There also may be possible heat issues if it's a closed up biocube... I remember the stock lights in my BC14 creating a good deal of heat, but it's an oceanic vs a coralife so maybe there is a difference

never really thought about that since it's all sealed up (never owned any of those "cube" tanks).. although if there is a heat problem running it for 12-14 hours, the problem would still be present if you ran it for 6 or 8 hours.

[BluCrab]

they do run a little hot during the summer ,just depends where he's located. Here in Houston we have our AC's running so my tank would never go above 78.

[stevemaxwellrn]

Thanks for the quick responses everybody! I'm new to the joys of marine tanks and still trying to learn. Today's lesson is that even if you have plenty of various sizes of empty shells for your hermit crabs, don't be surprised when you get up in the morning and see them snacking on one of your Trochus snails wonder if the poor fella fell from the rocks and couldn't right itself. Oh well...probably need to find some bigger snails