How should I run my aquarium light?
by Aquaboy on Friday, January 29th, 2010 | 3 Comments
I found a aquarium light that has 3 switches, one for white light, one for blue and another for the led night light. Should I be running the blue and the white together or run them at different times. And if you run them together why can’t I just buy a cheap dual strip florecent light and replace one of the white bulbs with a blue bulb?
do you have a reef or just saltwater.
for a reef you should run the blue actinic and the 10000k bulb at the same time, yes you could of gotten a compact or a 50/50.
The lLED lunar light is used at night when your other two lights are off.
Im assuming this is for a saltwater setup. Some people have the blue light come on 1 hour before the white light, then both are on for 11 hours, then the white light turns off, and the blue light stays on for 1 hr later than the white. These lights get hotter than a flourescent light, therefore I dont think putting one of these bulbs in a flourescent fixture would be a good idea….I could be wrong though.
The way I run mine is the the blue (actinic) is set to come on 1 hour before the white (daylight) then the white and blue stay on togather then the blue stays on one hour after the white goes off. My actinic are on 10hrs and the daylight 8hrs. The led go on when the actinic go off and go off when they come on. This serves to mimic to some extent sunrise and sunset. This helps prevent the fish from being startled when the lights come one and gives them time to get to there hiding places for the night when the completely go off. Running both at the same time creates a more natural light color sepctram than running the daylight alone as this tends to give everything a yellow hue. Also the blue lightwaves penetrate deeper in the tank that the others.
Are you running compact florecents or just regular florecents. If you are running compact florecents they put out much more light per watt than a regular florecent which is the diffrence in the fixture you have and a cheap dual strip. Also make sure you have the bulbs in the correct positions in the fixture. The daylight bulbs put out much more heat than the actinics and if they are made to be in certin positions then the cooling fans will generally only come on when the position for the daylight bulbs is turned on.