[King-Kong]

Does staggering the start and stop times of our metal halides to recreate a left-right motion (or right-left motion) across the tank help the corals in any way? Are their growth paterns more "natural"?

I am about to add a second MH to my 90g (mixed tank; softies, lps, sps, with daylight VHOs over the softies and MH over the SPS. I am dumping the softies and with it the daylight VHOs. http://www.d3f.org/misc/fish/90g/74-fulltank.jpg)

At first I was going to place both MH lamps on the same timer, but now I thought about staggering it so the MH on the left starts a couple hours before the one on the right. Would this cause corals in the middle to grow more evenly as oposed to "straight up" ?

 

[gwaco]

i don't find it to make a differance . both of my m.h. s are on seperate timers and it is next to impossible to have them turn off and on at the same time . there is about a 15 minute interval between them . one thing about having them staggered is if you use magnetic ballast you don"t have to worry about a big surge on your circuit which may pop the c.b.. this may be especially helpful if you have a bunch of other stuff on the same circuit .

 

[King-Kong]

Well, 15 minutes was less than I was thinking. I wouldnt expect any reasonable growth pattern changes for just a 15 minute difference between the two lights.

Good point on the power surge issue, however; I hadnt considered that.