Doubling down on my lighting cycle

[cocojakes]

Okay, so I've been doing some research, and looking around the net, trying to see if anyone else has tried this. I'm going to be moving into a new apartment soon, which will allow my DT to be in the living room, instead of my bedroom. I've always wondered about doing two lighting cycles, primarily so that I can enjoy the tank in the morning when I get up, and at night when I get home, without it burning the corals for the 10h in-between. What little research I've done suggests that i would actually get more coral growth from a 6h on 6h off lighting cycle. Currently its not that feasible because I prefer to sleep more than 6h at night, and my tank is right beside the bed.

 

I haven't started, but wanted to know if anyone on here has tried such a thing, if they experienced more growth, and most importantly, how the fish reacted. I'm not as concerned about the growth of my corals, as I am the health of my fish (if it helped with coral growth though, I wouldn't be upset) just thats not the main goal, the main goal is to be able to enjoy the tank more during the hours that I'm home.

 

The concept behind the growth is that most corals do their actual growth (depositing of calcium structure) during the night, particularly the first 3-5h of the night, with the stored energy from the day. Similarly, after 5 or 6h of daylight, they cannot store much more energy, and extra light is lost on them as they won't start using the stored energy until the night time anyway.

 

I thought it was an interesting concept, but I want to have an even cycle (don't want to have a short night during the day, and a long night at night to allow me to sleep, since that would probably put them even more out of wack). Any input, experience, ideas from the forum? Like I said, still in the early stages of research, but it seems like its worth a shot.