seecrabrun
Active Member
I'm struggling with deciding on a lighting schedule for one of my tanks. It is in basically an attached sunroom. Meaning it's basically a room with nothing but windows and a solid roof, but is open to the rest of the house.
So obviously it gets a lot of natural sunlight, but then the room itself gets a lot of house light. I've taken to trying to avoid using house lights in that area as much as possible, and I've also put UV blocking film and curtains on the windows. Still, the room is quite bright. I was thinking with so much natural "white" light I should run the blue longer/higher?
The room is directly on the east of the house, meaning the sun rises on it in the morning. Then it stays well lit until about an hour before sunset.
So for ease of discussion, I'll use generic values for times.
6am the sun begins to rise and the room sees a bit of that haunting blue light.
8am the sun is shining directly at the windows and the room is in a bright warm glow.
12 noon the sun is hot and heavy and almost directly overhead. The room stays its brightest until about 3pm.
4pm the sun begins to set and the room begins to dull.
6pm it is now dark and the room lights are on.
After the sun sets the lighting situation is obviously fully controllable.
I currently am battling algae issues from too much light. I have spots of algae where the sun used to directly shine in the tank between noon and 3. That is why the film and curtains are now up.
I would absolutely love some help from some of you who have been doing this a while. I'm worried about running too long or too high and I only just added my first coral, so I really don't know what I'm doing. I watched a video on lighting schedules by melev's and it was very helpful!
The tank is a 20 tall, nano reef. I have a single kessil a160we and the spectral controller, so I can adjust the lighting schedule quite a bit.
So obviously it gets a lot of natural sunlight, but then the room itself gets a lot of house light. I've taken to trying to avoid using house lights in that area as much as possible, and I've also put UV blocking film and curtains on the windows. Still, the room is quite bright. I was thinking with so much natural "white" light I should run the blue longer/higher?
The room is directly on the east of the house, meaning the sun rises on it in the morning. Then it stays well lit until about an hour before sunset.
So for ease of discussion, I'll use generic values for times.
6am the sun begins to rise and the room sees a bit of that haunting blue light.
8am the sun is shining directly at the windows and the room is in a bright warm glow.
12 noon the sun is hot and heavy and almost directly overhead. The room stays its brightest until about 3pm.
4pm the sun begins to set and the room begins to dull.
6pm it is now dark and the room lights are on.
After the sun sets the lighting situation is obviously fully controllable.
I currently am battling algae issues from too much light. I have spots of algae where the sun used to directly shine in the tank between noon and 3. That is why the film and curtains are now up.
I would absolutely love some help from some of you who have been doing this a while. I'm worried about running too long or too high and I only just added my first coral, so I really don't know what I'm doing. I watched a video on lighting schedules by melev's and it was very helpful!
The tank is a 20 tall, nano reef. I have a single kessil a160we and the spectral controller, so I can adjust the lighting schedule quite a bit.