Water Evap lighting question.

[hollywooddiver]

I have a 10g fowlr with stock lighting (the light bars that come in the tank kits) well my lighting right now run from 8:30am-9:00pm. So i am thinking of running them for a shorter time period cause my water evaporates like crazy and its not hot in my house. So my question is what would you folks recommend for time on running these lights? i was thinking of 10:00am to 7pm. What do you think? A new guy at the lfs told me he runs his lights for 10 minutes before he is gonna feed then turns them off 10 minutes after feeding. So i guess a total of 30 minutes a day. I think that is just nuts but i dunno.

 

[scsinet]

Water evaporation has to do less with ambient temperature and more with ambient humidity.
The evaporation is likely occuring because it's very dry this time of year (usually below 30%) so water evaporates very readily.
Topping off may be the only thing you can do.
But being that it's a FO system, you could reduce the lighting. Even the 9 hours you are proposing is an awful lot... you could probably do 6 hours and be okay. The ambient light in your house can simulate lower light levels that occur at sunrise and sunset, so this would probably be fine.

 

[t316]

Definately reduce your time period here. This may not slow down evaporation much (SCSI pointed out why) but you are running way too long. If you work from home and just enjoy the lights on, find something else, less intense, to run during the day that will still show off the tank and save the big guns for only a 6-8 hr. prime time period. I run mine 4PM - 11PM, which ensures that they are on when I am at home most. I have moonlights from dusk till dawn, and natural light in the house is all the tank gets during the day.

 

[hollywooddiver]

ok sounds good. thank you