Has anyone been doing this to their tank.

[delsol650]

Its an issue on REEFKEEPINGMAGAZINE about turning off your lights for 3 days ( complete Darkness )... Its suppossed to help out a lot of things in your tank.

I've only done the 7day Darkness but that was to kill off Dinoflangelletes.

its a thread of the month on RKM.


http://archive.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1078532

[Elite]

Dannieboiz did.. He said it worked great but the algae came back as soon as he turned the light on :lol:

[rleechb]

I did it as well. Pretty worthless unless you have some serious algae problems. I turned out the lights to my wife's nano for a week; got rid of all her algae (and she had a TON). Tank looks great.

I did a 3-day lights out on my sps tank, and it didn't do anything for my tank. Maybe a little bit less algae (I have very little to begin with), but I got quite a bit of browning of sps around my tank. Some of my sps went a bit brown on me during the 3 day lights out, and then bleached after I turned the lights back on.

If you're running a low-nutrient sps... I really wouldn't recommend it.

[delsol650]

nah, my tank has nutrients. I think my favorite blenny that was about 4" bit the dust... He got so used to going into the PH's to clean them when off that he probly went it while it was on...

I haven't seen him in 3-4 days.. plus started to get a algae bloom of some type.. figured probably cause he died in the tank... Havent seen my hermits and tongan nassarius either... probably in the back of the tank doing cleanup on the blenny... sucks...

[Unarce]

I found it interesting that natural reefs got a blast of light 200+ some-odd days a year. Out of curiousity, I've been lighting my tank only 6 days a week for the past few months.

These would be the positives for me:

-I can clean the glass every 10 days, which exhibits only a thin film
-saves electricity
-less yellowing of the water

As far as color or growth, I haven't noticed any difference. However, my PM is a deeper purple now. Maybe the dark period is just as important as the light period.

[sfsuphysics]

While all of that about the reefs is true, I'd still be interested how much light actually gets blocked on cloudy days compared to what we light our tanks with, because even on a cloudy day it still is really bright.

[Unarce]

I've never been diving, so I wouldn't know. Where did you dive, Mike? Was the reef still well lit on a cloudy day?

[sfsuphysics]

Sorry for the ambiguity, I meant that here on Terra Ferma it's bright on cloudy days. I know that our eyes are a bad gauge of how bright something is, but I would think that if you can cast a shadow it's pretty bright.

[Unarce]

Makes sense on a cloudy or overcast day. I wonder how it would look during rain or a storm. Figure, Indonesia has a 4 month rainy season. There's got to be quite a few dark reefs during those times.

[Kinetic]

you know how you can get a sunburn still pretty easily on cloudy days?

maybe you can use a 70watt hqi single rather than your 1000 watters I know you guys use for 3 days instead to simulate cloudy days, while still providing a bit of light. though I think algae would still be happy with that =P

[Nuuze]

When I was in Hawaii at the beach on vacation my worse sunburn days were the cloudy days!

[tuberider]

I got sunburned at a dark and stormy Pavones (9 degrees lat).

[juaninsac]

The reason you get sunburned on cloudy days is that clouds are transparent to the UV light that causes the sunburn. UV light from MH lamps is almost completely blocked because glass is opaque to UV light. So it's kind of hard to relate light in the wild to light in a tank that way. :)

[sfsuphysics]

glass has a very high index of refraction for UV light, it's not completely opaque, however when you get to window thickness the UV is almost completely extinct. MH bulbs have a special UV blocking coating as well, as the thickness of that glass alone would not stop that much UV.

[africangrey]

Absolubly nothing positive or negative gained in my SPS dominated tank, PG&E called me on the fourth day asked me to turn my light back on :)

Seriously, I left my tank in dark for 3 days and ran 24hr illumination on the chato filled refugium during that period. My front glass was spotless and all my wrasse were hungry as hell, that was that. Will do it again next month, or when heat wave strike us to save $3.00:)

[stubbsz]

Hmm. Next time I go away for a weekend I might do it.
-Adrian

[delsol650]

I'll probly try it after I do a large water change next week and during the time I put all new T5 bulbs...

[Kinetic]

My dumb AquaMedic Bulb kept falling out of the socket, left it off for a few days while waiting for a Phoenix 14K replacement (which sits rock solid in the hqi socket btw compared to the AB bulb) and... well... didn't see a difference =P I'll try it again with a before and after photo.

[dannieboiz]

Yah, I actually did this 2 weeks ago after reading the artical. Was off for 3 days strange, my algae went away but came back after a week. I think I'm just due for a water change that's all. My tank is only 2 months old.

[HKSTurbo28]

delsol650: by this "I've only done the 7day Darkness but that was to kill off Dinoflangelletes.", you mean you were able to get rid of flatworms?

[delsol650]

7 days of full darkness to get rid of " DINOFLANGELLETES "

[HKSTurbo28]

dinoflangelletes is another name for flatworms, right? sorry if this is a stupid question but i wasn't sure if that's another name for flatworms.