Lighting

The main tank is lit by three 400-watt singled-ended metal halides bulbs under Lumenarc III reflectors; the center bulb is a Radium 20K while the two on the ends are XM 20K. Before running the Lumenarc reflectors I was using three Spider reflectors, but I never felt I was getting the best lighting coverage throughout the tank, and moving to the Lumenarc reflectors quickly fixed that problem. All of the lights are spaced approximately 8” from the water’s surface. All of the metal halide lights are powered by PFO standard (M59) ballasts.

For supplemental lighting I run three 60” 140-watt URI VHO bulbs (two Super Actinics and one Actinic White) powered by Icecap 660 ballasts. We also have a 25-watt incandescent bulb to simulate moonlight at nighttime.

For the coral fragment tank we are running two 250-watt XM 20K double-ended bulbs housed in ReefOptix III pendants which are fired by a PFO dual HQI ballast. There are also two T5 Super Blue+ and Actinic+ for supplemental lighting over the reef tank. The refugium is on a reverse daylight schedule using two 24” 65-watt power compact fluorescent bulbs.

These lights are controlled by an Octopus 3000 using every option available. The tank’s daytime lighting sequence starts with the set of three VHO bulbs coming on first, followed by the center halide bulb thirty minutes later. The two metal halides on either side of the center bulb fire together another half hour later with the end of the daylight cycle powering off in reverse order, ending with the VHO bulbs tuning off.

Photoperiod

8:30 a.m.: moonlight on
9:30 a.m.: VHO actinic on
9:45 a.m.: moonlight off
10:00 a.m.: center 400-watt halide on
10:30 a.m.: both side 400-watt halides on
5:00 p.m.: center 400-watt halide off
5:30 p.m.: both side 400-watt halides off
6:30 p.m.: moonlight on
7:00 p.m.: VHO actinic off
9:30 p.m.: moonlight off