Advice on light schedule

[Aquascape Ecosse]

Hi,

I was looking to see if anyone could give me some advice on my lighting setup and how best to use it for my plants.

I have a 300litre tank with Ciano led light bars, the first bar is standard lighting that comes with the tank and i have purchased the "plant led" light from Ciano, i will link below for reference.

CLE150 Plants - Ciano

ciano.pt

I can run both light bars at the same time or independently.

Is there a good schedule for lighting i could be using, something like 4 hours normal light and 4 hours plant light so the tank gets 8 hours of light a day?

I have albino corys in the tank so i am unsure how much light to put into the tank.

 

[Connswater]

light bars at the same time or independently

Good question and I suspect you might get lots of different answers. With CO2? Floating plants? If with CO2 and floating plants I'd be tempted to go with 6 hours both, and one hour either side with just the normal, i.e. 8 hours in total, 6 hours higher light, you might then discover you need to dial down the 6 hours or dial up. Without CO2 injection I'd be much more conservative initially, maybe four hours with both and an hour either side with just the normal. With high light plants you might find you need to run both for 8 hours, with low light, you might find the purple bulb a bit much. It will be interesting what others think. I've never found a total photo period of much more than 8 hours necessary but much less than 6 seems to only work in the short term to address algae issues. For carpeting plants with injected CO2, with such a large volume of water, you might need a bit more light, but I suspect these will be very effective LEDs. Purple light tends to be significantly more energy efficient than white light for growing plants. Good luck, and please do post a photo or two when you are happy with things. From experience, the corydoras will be fine regardless of lighting, so long as the substrate suits them and they have shade in the tank from bog wood, rocks and plants and middle water fish don't steal all their food.

 

[Aquascape Ecosse]

Thanks for the reply, i dont have or going to be using co2 on this setup, i'm really a novice just getting started. I dont have any floating plants. It was a nature selection from aquarium gardens i have in the tank:

2 x Bucephalandra
3 x Anubias
3 x Microsorum sp.
2 x Portion of moss
3 x Background Stem Plant
4 x Cryptocoryne

I'm just a bit unsure of how to run the both lights, like together or alternating.

First picture with the natural light, 2nd is both on, and 3rd is plant light only.

 

[Fishfur]

Almost all the plants you have currently will do best with quite low intensity light and most of them are rather prone to becoming covered in algae if the light is too intense.

Diatoms can coat their leaves so thickly that the buildup blocks all the light from reaching them and while some green algae don’t stick to leaves & other surfaces, a number of them do. The ones that stick to leaves do a lot of damage to those leaves.

Algae growth often starts because overly intense light stimulates its zoospores to germinate & once algae starts growing it’s a lot harder to deal with. It’s a little easier to avoid triggering germination than it is a to clean up the growth later.

If the lights can be dimmed I would dim them substantially- maybe 30% intensity at most to start with.

Or consider using al most anything that will float & block a good proportion of the light temporarily, in order to provide shade. Floating plants are great for this but take some time to spread out to cover enough of the water’s surface.

My concern is that you may end up with an algae farm if the light is too intense. Duration matters too but intensity matters most.

Currently none of my lighting is dimmable so I use floating plants to help control how much intensity reaches the plants below the surface and the only tank with an algae problem is the one where I replaced older fixtures with a new & very intense light.

The floaters were sparse & in very little time I had fluffy clouds of a filamentous alga growing all over it. The good thing is that it isn’t one that adheres to surfaces & algae eaters like it.

The bad news is I need to replace the brand new fixture because it’s just too intense. I hope to use it to grow green rocks for assorted algae eaters instead.

 

[bazz]

First picture with the natural light, 2nd is both on, and 3rd is plant light only.

What are the intensity %'s of the lights in the three photographs, all 100% ?

 

[bazz]

Is the tank 60cm's high?

 

[Aquascape Ecosse]

What are the intensity %'s of the lights in the three photographs, all 100% ?

Hi Bazz,

The tank is 60cm. Yes they are all 100%, no dimmable controller included. Which leads me onto my next ongoing research which is the inline dimmable timer controllers for led lights. I havent searched the forum yet to see if anyone has experience of using them.

 

[bazz]

Hi Bazz,

The tank is 60cm. Yes they are all 100%, no dimmable controller included. Which leads me onto my next ongoing research which is the inline dimmable timer controllers for led lights. I havent searched the forum yet to see if anyone has experience of using them.

Under those circumstances my personal plan of attack would be just use the natural light for 8 hours/day to begin with, and as soon as possible (like now) add floating plants and more fast growing stems. Once you have a reasonable amount of plant mass, surface coverage and no other unexpected problems (algae growth), consider introducing the second light.
As I said though, it is the route I would take but there are a multitude of other possibilities.

 

[Aquascape Ecosse]

I have now got a dimmer fitted to the light so i can turn intensity down a bit and experiment.