Moon and night lighting

How important is moon lighting or night lighting for the aquarium? I know of the importance of teh moon and its phases for critters in teh ocean, but often times we do not want some of the results of this, such as explosions of coral reproduction, etc.

As I am not able to put my moonlights on a timer, everything is manual. I usually turn them on when I turn on my regular lights, then off when I go to bed. I wonder if this has a detrimental effect, if I should just leave the moonlights on all night, or what?!?!
 
I was under the same impression that we don't necessarily want corals spawning due to lunar / tidal cycles, but I've heard of a few of these events occurring without causing serious problems. That being said, I haven't heard if it harming anything by not having a lunar cycle, or using a fixed schedule.

Personally, my moonlights are on for 5 hours a night, on a timer.
 
Moonlights are so small lightwise they won't really effect anything. If you want to dim them withe the cycles to attempt to produce a spawn go right ahead but really no need. I've run moonlights 24/7 on my last 3 tanks spanning like 5 years now and never had any issues.

I've also had tanks where I had none and no issues. Pure choice in my opinion.

I also never anted anything to spawn. To much of a chance to foul the water!
 
Darby,

I have these moonlights for my tank. "It automatically varies the intensity of the connected moonlights over a 29.5 day period." Maybe something to consider for your 90g.
http://www.fishbowl-innovations.com/product/controller

Mark
 
Interestingly enough, I bought the expensive moonlight addon for my aquacontroller, and I don't think it even dims etc...only turns the moonlights on at certain intervals.
 
I guess the real question I'm getting at is: does leaving them on or off make a difference?

A buddy of mine tells me that he gets hair algea if he leaves his blue LEDs on all night, but he doesn't have actinics for daytime. I want to see if he leaves them on during the day if it'll do anything. very odd...
 
@Darby wrote:
I guess the real question I'm getting at is: does leaving them on or off make a difference? A buddy of mine tells me that he gets hair algea if he leaves his blue LEDs on all night said:
It shouldn't make a difference, and I really don't think the LEDs are going to affect hair algae growth, although I could be wrong...
 
Basically no effect on anything positive or negative. They've been around enough now that we would have some evidence if there was any difference and thre is just not. In fact there has been no real results of even the expensive phase simulators stimulating spawning any more then normal so simply looks.

They are way to dim to presume that they woud create any algea or effect photosynthesis in any way.
 
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