New to Nano Reefing...Lighting questions?

[huskerreefer]

Aloha everyone! I am brand new to the Nano Reef hobby as of yesterday afternoon, when my family and I picked out a 14 gallon Oceanic Biocube from our LFS. So far I have added about 9.75lbs of live rock, most of a 20lb back of live sand, and a package of "Bio Spira" that I was told would help kick start the bio balls and help "cycle" the tank.
My first questions (of many I'm sure

) is about the biocube's 3 different lights.
1. What is the recommended timing settings for the lights if setting up on a timer and how do you accomplish this?
2. Does the Actinic light stay on the entire day, or just the hour before and the hour after the daylight CFL?
3. When should the lunar LED's be set to come on and for how long?
I purchased a timer that will allow for two daytime items to be powered on while the two night outlets are off, and vice versa for the night time cycle. The other 4 outlets are constantly on. Basically I have the Actinic and the daylight CFL's set to come on at 8am and off at 8pm. Using this type of timer, the night outlets immediately cycle on after when the daylight outlets cylce off...hence the lunar LED's are on from 8pm until 8am. Will this work or will I need to find multiple timers to plug into the power strip.
Thanks in advance and sorry for the long winded post!

 

[scsinet]

Welcome to the board!
I am not 100% familiar with this particular cube, but I will assume the cube is set up so that the actinics, daylights, and moonlights are all on separate plugs.
The moonlights can stay on all of the time, or you can time them. WHen the main lights are on, the moonlights are fully drowned out. They use practically no electricity and run forever without burning out, so it's not usually worth the timer. If you have a timer already though, go ahead and use it.
The actinics can either come on an hour or so before and stay on during the time the main lights are on, then stay on an hour or so later, creating a sunrise/sunset effect, or you can run them all together (which is what I do). It's really your choice.
With the timer you have, you can easily switch the moonlights opposite the main lights and run both the actinic and daylight main lights at once, or you can buy another timer to stage them.

 

[huskerreefer]

Thank you so much for the clarification! I wasn't sure if the Actinic lights were only on during the dawn/dusk phase.

 

[fishymaster776]

can i ask how many watts total that lighting is? cause most lighting that comes in a set doens't have enough for reef items.

 

[huskerreefer]

1-24 watt True Actinic 03 Blue
1=24 watt 10,000K Daylight
2-.75 watt Lunar Blue-Moon Glow LED's
It's all stock so far.