new lights

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by Johnny Reefer

Hmm. All sounds pretty complicated, plus you'd have to stay home all day long if you didn't use the digital timer, which would be a PITA to set anyway. Not to say these methods wouldn't work, but I think I'll stand by the "1 hour every two days" theory

ya it is but a 20 buck timer takes care of it all for ya. anyways I have done it this way and I have just ponded them on be for, what I have found my self is that the more water flow I have the less chance of bleaching there is, weather this is just something that seams to be working for me or there is actually something behind it I am not sure.

the reason 1 on 1 off is better than just increasing the on time by an hour every day is there is a point where a coral becomes light saturated when it is exposed to brighter lights, after this point if I recall correctly the bacteria in the coral are producing more sugar than the coral can use and the reaction of this and how the coral trys to get rid of the excess sugar cause the bleaching. apparently a coral can take extreme light for an hour be for this starts to occur and this is why the on off thing, it prevents over production of sugars by the bacteria for coral food and allows the coral to reduce the bacteria population to the proper levels.

If I can find the article about it I will post it for you, much more involved than what I wrote but for now the readers digest version will have to do.

Steve