Night mode - yay or nay?

[e46er]

this is a good question I will be following along.
I recently hooked up my 4-RW8s to my apex and they run 60-100% during the day and run 30-40% during the night ( numbers are ballpark but pretty close i cant remember exactly)
with my new 250G DD i ordered 2 RW15s i figure ill keep them both on the same side on a wave mode and have my other 4 RW8 along the back wall maybe 12" off the sand as I have my snapper return with 4 outlets spaced evenly along the back near the surface.

I havent noticed a difference either way in my corals, slowing them down at night but its only been a couple months running off the apex.
I may run the rw15s off the apex and run the 4 rw8s on their stock controllers on random mode as it seems to be alot more random than what the apex can do ( or what the operator can set it to do) i cant seem to get a full random mode going just 2 different %s.

[Ram3500]

Let your kids sleep turn your wave makers off. Corals will be fine if any thing it will give them a chance to feed don't over think the flow nature needs time to chillaxe

[ComfortablyNumb]

The waves may calm down at night...but the current/tides dont care if its dark. Current and tidal flows don't really drop very much at night in nature.

[spedly]

I turn them down a little. During the day my powerheads pulse from 0-100% with some timed "storm modes" to stir up debris. At night I change the pulse to 0-90% and disable the storm modes. When I was in Mexico in February I noticed that the waves/current seemed to slow down a little at night. But like ComfortablyNumb said, not very much.

[FishyFishy!]

Its been ages since i have had an ecotec. Do the MP's have a night mode too? Or is that more controlled through a controller?

I think I will end up putting a little LED strip in there to aid the night mode. I guess i'd want my rest at night too.

[brisco]

I program my gyre with my apex to ramp down at night and then work at a reduced flow. No science behind this that I know of, but changing flow patterns seem to keep SPS happy.

[gregzz4]

Originally Posted by FishyFishy!

Do the MP's have a night mode too? Or is that more controlled through a controller?.

Yes they have a programmable night mode built into the factory controller.
4 speed settings to choose from, and 6, 8, 10, 12 or 14 hours.

[FishyFishy!]

Originally Posted by gregzz4

Yes they have a programmable night mode built into the factory controller.
4 speed settings to choose from, and 6, 8, 10, 12 or 14 hours.

Do they have a photocell?

[Myka]

I use night mode on my Tunzes, and wish my Gyre had night mode. The SPS extend their feeder polyps at night, and I find if I turn down the flow with the night mode the feeder are polyps are extended even bigger. I feed them in the evening after lights out and add the Aquaforest additives too. The bigger the feeder polyps are the better they are for catching food so I like the night mode.

[Delphinus]

I noticed that for me aggression among fish tankmates went way down when they no longer had to fight for the best hidey spots in the rocks. So I always tune my flow down now.