What is the best lighting schedule?

[CyberGuy]

I just bought several automatic timers for my lights.
What is the best lighting schedule in terms of these 3 lights for the corals to thrive?:


1. Daylight
2. Actinic
3. Moonlight

[jonathan]

daylight usually depends upon your schedule...what time of the day will you be home to actually enjoy your aquarium? i would run actinics as a dawn/dusk effect on either end of your daylight hours, and as for the moonlight...technically the moon is out 24/7. you could run your moonlights 24/7 therefore there would be no need for a timer but on the other hand you could run a moonlight on the opposite schedule of your daylight schedule. my suggestion is as follows (for example):

daylights 10:00am to 8:00pm
actinics 9:00am to 9:00pm
moonlights 9:00pm to 9:00am (or) 24/7

as i mentioned, this is just one example...i'm sure others will chime in to what has worked best for their situations. HTH.

[90_Berlin_joe]

I have my setup so that i can see more when I get home at night. Also depends on what you have in your tank. SPS you might want to have the lights on longer to get more growth or less for softies like mushroom.

Running 8 blub TEK T5-HO lighting for a 12 hour period.
Actinics 9:30am - 9:30pm
Daylight 11am - 7pm
no moon light [No documented benifical use]

[Malachi]

i have 6 T5 HO and 3 moon lights

Actinics 6:00 AM to 9 PM
(2) 10K and (2) 12K 9:00 AM to 8:00 PM
Moon Lights 24/7

Moonlights have no benifical use, but when the baby cries at 3:00 AM, its nice to see whats crawing on the sand bed.