How long should my light be on?

[Abzdot]

Hi, this is my first marine tank and I have a Fluval Evo with an Eheim compact 1000 pump (upgraded to 1000 litres/hour instead of 500) with the Fluval PS2 Protein Skimmer and I have the normal Fluval Evo light.

My tank has live sand and live rock with no fish or coral at the moment and has been cycling for around 2 weeks.

 

I have been turning my white light on in the late morning (10-11am) and turn it off into the blue light in the evening (10pm-midnight) but I do not turn the light off. I just told my friend who doesn't have a marine tank and he said that it is really bad to keep a light on for that long.

 

Sorry for the long message, i'm new to this and I have no idea what information you may need so it's better to give it now 🙂

Thanks for your help.

[DreC80]

Most people's photo period is 9 to 12 hours.  You honestly don't even need the light on while the tank is cycling.  I would definitely scale back...you are inviting an algae bloom.

[jservedio]

It entirely depends on how powerful your lights are, how big your tank is, are and what coral you are keeping. My light is maxing out at 43 watts of LED power at peak, and this is what my lighting schedule has looked like for the past 6 years for a 20g tall with a mix of SPS and LPS. If you told us what kind of lights you had, we would give you a better idea of what a sensible light schedule would look like.

 

[Abzdot]

1 hour ago, jservedio said:

It entirely depends on how powerful your lights are, how big your tank is, are and what coral you are keeping. My light is maxing out at 43 watts of LED power at peak, and this is what my lighting schedule has looked like for the past 6 years for a 20g tall with a mix of SPS and LPS. If you told us what kind of lights you had, we would give you a better idea of what a sensible light schedule would look like.

 

as I mentioned, I have the fluval evo stock lights. I have read that it is a 14000k light but it has no special automatic timer

[Clown79]

8-10hrs, with ramp up and ramp down 12hrs.

[Abzdot]

2 minutes ago, Clown79 said:

8-10hrs, with ramp up and ramp down 12hrs.

Unfortunately my light doesn't support any ramp up/down setting. it is turn on and off

[jservedio]

1 hour ago, Abzdot said:

as I mentioned, I have the fluval evo stock lights. I have read that it is a 14000k light but it has no special automatic timer

That light isn't going to keep corals alive - assuming you have the Fluval 13.5, that light is putting out less than 20 PAR at the surface, not enough to keep even the lowest requirement corals alive. If you are just keeping fish, you can just turn the lights on in the morning and turn them off at night - 12on/12off would be just fine. If you can time the blue and white separately, maybe blue on for 14 and white on for 8 (basically blues come on for 3 hours before the white and stay on 3 hours after the white goes off).

 

Edit: Apparently my older Fluval didn't come with the same light the Fluval 13.5 Marine VII comes with - if you have the older one with crappy lights, what I said above it true. If you have a newer one with the better lights, it'll keep some coral alive.

35 minutes ago, Abzdot said:

Unfortunately my light doesn't support any ramp up/down setting. it is turn on and off

If you are keeping corals, you will need a new light anyway!

[Clown79]

7 minutes ago, Abzdot said:

Unfortunately my light doesn't support any ramp up/down setting. it is turn on and off

You can use a light timer to turn them off and on.

 

With no livestock, I wouldn't keep them on at all and without ramp up and down, no more than 10hrs on.

[Abzdot]

1 minute ago, jservedio said:

That light isn't going to keep corals alive - assuming you have the Fluval 13.5, that light is putting out less than 20 PAR at the surface, not enough to keep even the lowest requirement corals alive. If you are just keeping fish, you can just turn the lights on in the morning and turn them off at night - 12on/12off would be just fine. If you can time the blue and white separately, maybe blue on for 14 and white on for 8 (basically blues come on for 3 hours before the white and stay on 3 hours after the white goes off).

If you are keeping corals, you will need a new light anyway!

what affordable light would you recommend? Most of them are too big for my tank 😕 

If I go lidless I need a light that is 45cm (18") long

[Clown79]

5 minutes ago, jservedio said:

That light isn't going to keep corals alive - assuming you have the Fluval 13.5, that light is putting out less than 20 PAR at the surface, not enough to keep even the lowest requirement corals alive. If you are just keeping fish, you can just turn the lights on in the morning and turn them off at night - 12on/12off would be just fine. If you can time the blue and white separately, maybe blue on for 14 and white on for 8 (basically blues come on for 3 hours before the white and stay on 3 hours after the white goes off).

If you are keeping corals, you will need a new light anyway!

There are lots of hobbyists using the stock light on the evo with corals. 

 

Soft and lps don't need high light.

[Abzdot]

1 minute ago, Clown79 said:

You can use a light timer to turn them off and on.

 

With no livestock, I wouldn't keep them on at all and without ramp up and down, no more than 10hrs on.

ill see if I can get a new light, I don't want to pay hundreds for a light that is more expensive than the whole setup

Just now, Clown79 said:

There are lots of hobbyists using the stock light on the evo with corals. 

 

Soft and lps don't need high light.

thats what i thought

[Clown79]

3 minutes ago, Abzdot said:

what affordable light would you recommend? Most of them are too big for my tank 😕 

If I go lidless I need a light that is 45cm (18") long

Black box on amazon. Mars aqua

 

Good budget light.

 

But before rushing out, do a search on here and online for evo owners who use the stock light. There are owners with corals.

[jservedio]

29 minutes ago, Clown79 said:

There are lots of hobbyists using the stock light on the evo with corals. 

 

Soft and lps don't need high light.

Definitely depends on the version of the Evo. I realize my old one came with different lights and edited my response to reflect that.

 

The 13.5 I had briefly as a QT tank came with a bunch of 1w white and RB LEDs that I think they advertised as 11,000K and like 1300 some-odd lumens. At least some of the the newest ones can - I know I've seen some people with the latest version of the Evo marine have some pretty sweet tanks. At least IME, older version I had certainly couldn't keep anything alive.

[Clown79]

17 minutes ago, jservedio said:

Definitely depends on the version of the Evo.

 

The 13.5 I had briefly as a QT tank came with a bunch of 1w white and blue LEDs that they claimed made roughly 1350 lumens, so less than 20 PAR at the surface. At least some of the the newest ones can - I know I've seen some people with the latest version of the Evo marine have some pretty sweet tanks. At least IME, the slightly older version I had certainly couldn't keep anything alive.

The older version wasn't an evo. The Spec and its lights are for freshwater.

 

The evo is designed for SW and only been out a couple yrs. Most ppl replace the light because of lack of customizing and control.

 

You can still use 1w leds, that's why those fixtures have more diodes to the fixtures that run 3w leds.

 

Without an actual par meter reading in various locations in the tank, its all speculation.

 

Even with Ai's, every person who has tested the par levels have gotten different results from eachother.

 

Some see very high par throughout the tank while others- moderate.

 

In this hobby everyone recommends more flow, more light, but that isn't always beneficial.

Its important to provide what the corals actually needs.

corals only use a certain amount of light, the rest is wasted.

[Abzdot]

3 minutes ago, Clown79 said:

The older version wasn't an evo. The Spec and its lights are for freshwater.

 

The evo is designed for SW and only been out a couple yrs. Most ppl replace the light because of lack of customizing and control.

 

You can still use 1w leds, that's why those fixtures have more diodes to the fixtures that run 3w leds.

 

Without an actual par meter reading in various locations in the tank, its all speculation.

 

Even with Ai's, every person who has tested the par levels have gotten different results from eachother.

 

Some see very high par throughout the tank while others- moderate.

 

In this hobby everyone recommends more flow, more light, but that isn't always beneficial.

Its important to provide what the corals actually needs.

corals only use a certain amount of light, the rest is wasted.

how do you measure PAR ratings>

[Clown79]

4 minutes ago, Abzdot said:

how do you measure PAR ratings>

You need a par meter.

 

I personally have never bothered.

[christian321uy]

mine is 14k at 8 to 10 hrs on a day and 20k a couple hours at night for viewing