Mobile Bay Reef Keepers

I have heard of many different times to have the light on in your refugium but which ways do you guys like to do it. i have heard to do it opposite of when your normal lights are on and i have heard to do it at the same time that your lights are on. what do you think? so far i have had them on while the normal lights were off but i just don't like leaving lights on at night. does it really make any diifference? I am using a cascade 300 for my fuge if you were wondering.

I can't speak for everyone but I believe you will see that most people run either a reverse photoperiod or have there refugium lights on all the time. I leave mine on all the time but it is because my light cannot be put on a timer. Either one of these two ways will reduce the ph swings from day to night.

Thanks for the reply. I guess I will just stick with the opposite lighting method.

I have had much better success running 24-7 in the fuge when using calerpa. There is not a huge ph swing at night (when the MH go off.) I also noticed that my corals show better night polyp extension when the 24-7 fuge light is going. Could be a thousands unrelated reasons why, but if it;s working I try to keep it going even if I am too block headed to understand why

same here, i do the same thing

i read leaving the lights on all the time will also help keep the caulerpa from going sexual also

Only draw back I saw from 24/7 lighting was a little more water evaporation.
I have been running my lights during the same time the display lights are on and off at night, havent really noticed anything bad from it yet.

I've also have great success running it 24/7 i also went to home depot and for 30 bucks a got a fixture called lights of america its 65 watts of pure white light what a difference it has made, everything in my ecosytem (same as a fuge) has gone nuts double the growth on all my mirco algae 0 nitraits.

I too use and recommend the LOM (lights of America) 65W on a 10G refuge on a 12 hour (opposite) cycle.