Need help understanding lighting needs on my tank

[saltwater-girl]

Hello all:

2nd question post coming up I had such good luck with my 1st question post that I'm moving on to the next question. This one deals with lighting. Again..right now running a FOWLR tank but may in the future want to add some corals.

Our tank came with an Odyssea 48" T5 HO fixture. I believe this is the lighting fixture Odyssea T5 Aquarium Lighting

It has two boxes that run the lights. Each having one switch to turn them on and off. One box turns on the white lights and one box turns on the blue (which I believe are called actinic lights). Even when all switches are off the lights have 4 bulbs which remain on at all times...I believe these are the moonlight lights.

Questions are:

1) Do you always run the lights in a combined mode or should you run the lights seperately (white running at one time and blue at another) or should you run some combination of these options?
2) How long should you run the various modes for the tank you are lighting...ie. FOWLR or FOWLR and corals
3) Do we need anything else for the night lighting other than the 4 moonlight which are found on these lights

again..thank you for your input and replies

:high5:​

 

[user 26995]

The 4 moon lights are fine for night lighting.
I have a 6 bult T5 unit on my 90 gal tank. I am keeping leathers, soft coral and some LPS(frogspawn, hammer coral, acans and others)
I run the actinics from 11am till 10 pm and run the whites from 1pm to 8pm.
T5 lighting is a pretty good light to start with. You want to use good bulbs though. ATI and Giesemann bulbs seem to be the more popular ones, I believe.

 

[NC2WA]

to answer questions 1 and 2:

yes...if possible have the whites and blues on separate timers and have the blues come on 30-45 mins before the whites..then both lights on for 6 hrs, then whites off, with blues on for 1-2 then lights completely off.

total lighting period should around 8 hours and should use good bulbs ATI and Geismann are the T5 bulbs of choice..i run the Geismann 15K bulb for my white bulb..

 

[Peppie]

+ 1 on the above, very good advise.

 

[saltwater-girl]

Based on your replies we are have been on the right track but your responses will help us fine tune the lighting scheme on the tank. You guys are just a wealth of information .. I'm creating a sticky on my computer for saving some of the equipment suggestions and such so that I have an easy reference when I shop for things...

Thanks again everyone

 

[07FocusST]

1) Do you always run the lights in a combined mode or should you run the lights seperately (white running at one time and blue at another) or should you run some combination of these options?
Personally when I had a 4 bulb fixture I was able to control the lights... I would run 2 actinics (Blue-Purple) in the morning to simulate early sunrise, then run all 4 (3 Actinics w/ 1x 10k white) together by 9am roughly... then the reverse for sunset... I use 3x 1 watt lunar (blue) LEDs 24 hours a day/night to provide additional lighting/accent during the day and to provide lunar light at night.

2) How long should you run the various modes for the tank you are lighting...ie. FOWLR or FOWLR and corals
just my suggestion....

2 Actinics Start 7:30-8:00am to 4:00-5:00pm
Actinic + 10k white from 9:00-9:30am to 3:30-4:30pm
LED 24 hours

Basically all you are doing is having the pure actinic (2 blue/purple) lighting turn on 1 hour before and 1 hour after... if that makes sense

3) Do we need anything else for the night lighting other than the 4 moonlight which are found on these lights
No, you should be fine....

My answers are based off of my last setup which was 2x 420Nm Actinic, a 450/460Nm Actinic and a 10k white T5 bulb. My fixture had 2 independant controlled timers that allowed me to turn on and off 2 bulbs at a time...

Oh BTW... my tank was a standard rectangle 55 Gallon from Petco.... 48" tank.