light timer/timing cycle q's...

hey guys, i'm getting the nova extreme 4x54w with the LED's today, and i just want to know what the "general concensus recommendation" is for the light cycle...i was reading up on drsfostersmith.com, that it should run on a 9-10 hour cycle ( the white light would run for 9-10 hours, the actinics should turn on about 30 min's before the white cuts off).... i also read somewhere else that the LED's can stay on all the time, is this true?

anyway, i'd like a REALLY EASY way to set this up, like tell me what time to turn the lights on, and what time to turn them off...

also, hopefully, i will be getting a timer to make things easier, are there any recommendations about where to get one from or what brand to get? the only ones i've seen are the Grasslin single, and i think coralife single, double, and single digital... should i get 2 singles, or would i be better off getting one double?? or maybe even a single and a double, if the LED's have to be on a cycle....

 

You can run the actinics anywhere from 1-2 hrs before & after the daylights. Daylights for 8 hrs. LED's is up to you. When the normal lights are on they're not going to offer much. I don't run my LEDs every night - think about it - the moon isn't always out.

 

ok, well, how about this... actinics from 5 am to 9am, daylights from 8am to 4pm, actinics back on from 3pm to 7pm.... so from 7pm to 5am, i would just have the LED's on... ya know, just sitting here thinking, i kind of got an idea... if there was some way to run light sensors from outside to the lights... and then, say, if the sensor picks up X amount of light, then the actinics would come on, and then when it got a lot brighter outside, they would cut off and the daylights would come on, so on and so forth... but that would call for some pretty high tech stuff...

 

Don't turn the actinics off at 9 am- keep them going until 7 pm or whenever you decide to shut them off. They should be run when the daylights are on.

 

umm.... ok, uhh... wait a mi.... hermmm..... yup, my brain stopped working... i thought the whole point was to go from dark (night), to actinics (dawn), to actinics AND white's, then to just whites, then back to actinics and whites, then to actinics, then back to dark... but you're saying that anytime the white's are on, the actinics should be on???? why so?

 

not too hard to do actually. make a new plug with ballast for eash one, then plug them into a timer with multiple lines on it, each with their own timer. Is this a product that is already out there? Would this work?

 

The blue light that is produced by the actinics is the only color that isn't filtered out by water. The blue light spectrum is what feeds the zooxanthellae in your inverts. Fish and corals don't need white light really. We only run them for aesthetic reasons.

 

Not really, I use one of these controllers and you can change you lighting schedule anytime you want from a remote location as long as the computer is using Java! Real easy to use, all you need at home is a network or router. Comes in real handy with a daytime cut off temp in case the lights heat the water up too much it will shut them off.
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