I gather salties set their lights to come on slowly to simulate sunrise and sunset, rather than have them turn on suddenly and shocking the fish.

Are there lights that can be set on dim, that slowly brighten, or do you just set individual lights on timers so the lights come on one at a time in sequence?

i use blue lights to come on 1/2 hr before the halides turn on

then vice versa of an evening

I used to when I was triggering flowering responses, but not any more.

Now the lights just come on all at one time, and go off depending on if I want to see the fish at night.

LA that is what I suspected was usually done. Thanks guys.

:oops:

just noticed this is in the salty section. :oops:

yes, one would normally stagger the lighting and the times.

Start with blue at 7am. higher K at about 8.30 - 10000K at noon for 2 hours and then they go off, leaving the other halides on the rest of the day.

stagger them at the end of the day.

Or if your really lucky, you can get a very fancy LED system, me led unit is very good at slowly comming on to act as sun rise and sun set, + moon lights as well

Exo terra do light controllers, cant remember if they are T5 or T8, but its basically a control box, with 4 lots of endcaps to run 4 bulbs, and automatically brightens and dims gradually.