Tropical Fish Forums

[Marbles21]

my brother bought a 12g oceanic bio cube nano tank. there are 4 lighting selections. 1. just the floresent(bright and clear) 2. floresent and part of the purple floresent (bright witha hint of purple). 3. just the purple floresent (purple light) and finally 4. a dim light for night effect (its very dim.
he needs to know when to use the other (1-3) light settings? any help would be great. thanks
I thought that the purple lights are for the night setting but I don't know what to tell him about the mixture of the two. or which purple light to use at night, the bright purple or the dim purple.

the only thing in there now is some live rocks.
thanks

[MattTVI]

Hello,

According to oceanic's website, they have a 29, 14, and 8g. Is this an older cube?

There is no right lighting schedule for your tank. The very dim light, I suspect, is a moon light. Is it an LED (not like the others, but just a small bulb)?

Aside from the LED light, do you have three other bulbs or two? If you have 2x, I suspect one is a 50/50 daylight bulb (half 10k, half 6.7k) and the other bulb is what is called an actinic (purple or blue).

I see no reason to have more than 10hrs of light, even 8 would do fine on a fish only tank. I would start w/ the purple (actinic) light first and let it run for about an hour by itself, then light the daylight bulb and have it run for 6hrs w/ the purple, then turn off and run the actinic for another hour before it shuts off. You can run the moonlight at night for a few hours, but if you intended to keep coral, a consistent moonlight every night can "burn" a coral that is directly underneath it. Here's an easier to read light schedule for a total photo period of 10hrs.

(I'm starting this late under the assumption you work...)
12pm Actinic ON
1pm Daylight ON
9pm Daylight OFF
10pm Actinic OFF

11pm Moon light ON
3am Moon light OFF
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