3 Day Darkness cycle

H

hegi

I just ran across this http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1078532&perpage=25&pagenumber=1
thread on reefcentral. Has anyone tried the 3 days of darkness cycle. I think he makes a valid point about cloudy days etc. over reefs but even on cloudy days some light/radiation penetrates the clouds, which is why they tell you you should still wear sunscreen on cloudy days if you're going to be outside for long periods of time. I'm wondering if this is a good practice or not. Has anyone tried it? I don't want to jump on a bandwagon without being well informed.
 
Ben,

I wouldn't do the three day cycle unless I only had nothing but mushrooms and soft corals. Any SPS are more likely to be doom from this process. Just thinking about it, the SPS corals are more likely brown up and when the lights come back on, the SPS corals will become shock.
 
yes, tri that was something I was wondering about too. Like you say the shock of going from no light to light again seems like it would not be that great for sps.
 
If you look for Marc's thread on RC, he actually did the three day process which he is a brave man. I think he only lost one sps coral from the process.
 
I don't know guys...I've ran 2 or 3 days without lights a number of times over the years without any problem. That said, I never have had an SPS dominated tank, but plenty of softies, clams, a few gorgs, LPS and an oddball SPS or two. Never had a problem when I did it. Reasons for the lights out were to battle cyno or HA and once my lights burned out while I was out of town and couldn't get replacements before I got home.

The only thing negative that I found happened was the feather caulerpa I had went sexual once.

If you were to 'try' this technique, I would recommend you do it one day at a time each month and see how it goes. Don't start with 3 or 4 days right off the bat.

I get the arguement about the lack of light with storms, overcast days etc, but the thing he fails to point out is no matter how 'dark' it is, there is ALWAYS some light. I think if you do this kind of thing, duplicate it and run a low wattage PC or something instead of going totally DARK.
 
that's a good idea, I think he does run actinics the day before he turns all the lighting back on but, obviously, they are not really providing suitable light for sps anyway.
 
I did 3 days with no lights to try and eliminate dinoflagellites from my tank (slowed it down, but didn't kill it) and didn't notice any adverse effect on my corals, SPS or otherwise. I can say that I didn't need to clean the glass for over a week afterwards, so I think there is something to it.
 
@GraviT wrote:
I did 3 days with no lights to try and eliminate dinoflagellites from my tank (slowed it down said:
When my ballast died I had to wait 3 days for a replacement with no ill effects to my SPS.
Click to expand...
 
I ran the full 72 hours without any light. Prop section off, refugium off, reef lighting off. And my house was pretty dark because the trees have foliage due to spring.

One of my oldest milli's has been RTNing, which started about the night before the lights turned on. My reef has lots of SPS, some LPS, anemones, a clam, zoanthids, fish and more. Only the milli took it hard, and even its offspring joined in the suicide to some degree. Steve came over and I gave him two large pieces in hopes they might survive. Once he left, I hacked up the parent colony significantly and created about 20 frags that for the most part have held on. The main piece still has some sections with tissue, but it looks bad.

However, no trace of the dinoflagellates appeared the day my lights restarted. The glass on all four sides was crystal clean, the tank looked great, and the tips of the corals that were brown (dinos) were white / clean.

A few things to throw into the mix:

My salinity was down to 1.020 or possibly lower, unbeknownst to me. I was shocked to find out my refractometer was that far off, but it is calibrated and my reef is back up to 1.026sg at this time.

I treated the tank for redbugs three times in the past 4 weeks, including last Saturday night. Saturday day is when the lights were on.

I've instituted a new lighting schedule on my tank, where no MH bulb is on longer than 7 hours a day.

So while 72 hours may be no problem for SPS, I can't make a blanket promise they will be fine. Due to the fact the corals were in lowered salinity for some time and had to endure my raising it up over 7 days to the proper level, plus the medication for redbug treatment, plus the reducing lighting period compared to the past .... all of these could have been a factor in the problem with the milli now.

This is what my tank looked like after the three days of darkness:

fts_041407.jpg
alt="">
 
Marc,

Your tank looks great!!! What happen to the old days where just using a cleaning crew to clear up all the cyno? I don't think I would risk the 3 days without ligthing at all.
 
@737mech wrote:
[I]@tnn1567 wrote:[/I][quote="Marc said:
What eats cyano?"]

Waterflow, lots and lots of water flow. Actually, I added vodka and drip kalk 24 hrs a day. I think that has help me control an outbreak.
Click to expand...
 
There are very few reef safe critters that I've seen actually eating cyano. I've seen my queen conchs moving through it in my refugium, but I don't know if they were actually eating cyano or the algae under it.
 
The Mexican Red Footed Turbo snails eat Cyano, but I've not seen any at the LFS in a couple of years.

http://melevsreef.com/id/redfootedsnail.html
 
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