Light timing when adding new lights?

[pomme]

Light timing when adding new lights?

I have at the moment a 250w 14k de metal halide, two 18w actinics, and another 18w which is covered in mesh so gives the tank a moonlight effect over my 100 gal sps dominated tank.

The timings so far are:
18w actinics - on at 8 am
250 watt - on at 9 am
18w in mesh - off at 9am
18w in mesh - on at 9pm
250 watt - off at 9pm
18w actinics - off at 10pm

i am going to be adding 2 more 250 watt metal halides and was thinking of running the lights like this in the end:
18w actinics - on at 8 am
250 watt - on at 9 am
18w in mesh - off at 9am
two 250 watt - on at 10am
two 250 watt - off at 8pm
18w in mesh - on at 9pm
250 watt - off at 9pm
18w actinics - off at 10pm

when i add the lights (on the 20th) i was thinking of running them together at 1pm to 2pm and then every week increase this by 30mins.

Does that sound okay?

andrew

[Geoff]

that should work. just keep an eye on the corals. if they seem to be bleaching than slow it down.

G~

[yardboy]

I've been wondering about how to go about that myself. I'll confess to cruel and unusual treatment of my largest corals in the last few months. I've got my new tank all set up in the garage, the rock has all cycled, and due to space restrictions in my 70 (stuff growing like weeds) I moved all the largest corals into the 150, which has only got the actinics set up in it. They all seem to be doing fine, nothing has died, and they all have full polyp extension. This weekend I plan on making the big move, and afterwards I'll start ramping up the 3-250W DE 10000K Ushios on the tank. Some are proponents of a full lighting cycle but shading the corals with screening or some such with several layers that you progressively remove over a period of a week or 10 days. Do you think increasing time of light is just as effective? Not really keen on messing with screening material anyway, but if I have to.......

[pomme]

i would get worried with the screening from it setting fire with the heat from the halides, but that may just be me.

[yardboy]

I'd be me too if it caught on fire! I hadn't even thought of that, though I think they advocated putting the screen undewater, sounds like a royal pain to me anyway ou go about it.