jayfl234

I just bought Aquatlight Digital power center thinkiing it is going to be good to keep my daytime lights on during the day and my moonlight at night. I just wanted to know does anyone here have there tanks on timers? The timer is really difficult to understand and work thinking about taking it back and getting something else.

poppet

We run no timer, we just turn lights on in morning and off at night.

sgould

I just turn the lights on and off by hand when I want to view the tank. The only "timers" I have are a couple of automatic fish feeders, but I only use those when on vacation.

griffin

i use a timer. makes my life easier. don't need to worry about turning the lights on or off and i can control the amount of light the tank gets even if i'm not home. i usually have mine turn on around noon and off around 10 pm, and i'm not usually home at noon.

Luniyn

The best benefit to a timer (besides the set it and forget it) is it can help control algae breakouts in your tank. Leaving your lights on for 10-12 hours straight works just fine, but isn't necessary to get your plants to grow. However, it is necessary to get algae to grow as they need an uninterrupted photosynthesis cycle to survive. If you were to give them say 5 hours of light, then turn the lights off for 2 hours and then back on for 5 hours, you would still get your 10 hours of light your plants need, but you would successfully break up the photosynthesis cycle of algae and keep it at bay in your tank. For those that don't have algae problems it certainly isn't necessary to do this, but it's just one method you can try if it is a problem.

One thing to mention though is if you don't have any live plants in your tank, but have ambient light in the room that the tank is in, then you don't even need to keep your light on all day. I have a lot of windows that aren't hit by direct sunlight but let in more then enough light that turning on the room light during the day doesn't really add much to the room. So I only turn my tank light on when it's feeding time or when I just want a better view of my fish. When I'm done, then it goes off. The fish get more then enough light just from the ambient light and still get the night/day cycle they need.

There isn't a right and a wrong way to do this (well except for leaving your lights on 24 hours, as your fish really do need some sort of day/night cycle), so whatever works best for you and is the easiest to keep stable and constant. But there certainly are a lot of options and these are just some as well as what others have mentioned.

pistorta

I use the aqualight Digital power center, among other electronic timers. The Aqualight is good if you are using it for lights. If you want to control other equipment, it may be difficult to utilize. The day cycle on the timer is not independent from the night cycle. When one is off, the other will be on. I use it to control metal halides, power compacts, lunar LEDs and cooling fans. All of which are "light" related. My other equipment is controlled by independent electronic timers or controllers.

jsalemi

I use the Coralife mechanical power strip for my lights, and it works fine. The main light and the air pump are on during the day, and the moon light is on at night. And of course the filter and heater run 24/7.

I'm probably going to get the digital version for my soon-to-be-purchased 56g tank. DFS has it on sale for only a couple of bucks more than the mechanical one, and I think that it keeps the time even when the power is off, so I don't have to reset it after doing tank maintenance.

MrWaxhead

Timers on everything here, I have red (going to switch to amber soon) LEDs that kick on before my main lights, my c02 is on the same timer, so my c02 levels are up and running for the lighting period. And my lights kick on for the same 10 hours every day, and blue LEDs for 3 hours after lights out.