Refugium light question

[miston]

I got a 12 gallon NanoCube from nanocustoms.com with 96watts of PCs, the chiller, and a refugium light that covers chamber 1 and 2.

I had planned on running the refugium light opposite my dislay lights to help with stabalizing the pH. However I think the refugium light spills over into the main tank too much. Thus I'm afraid its not a good idea to have it on at night. That and the moonlights are SO cool, that the refugium light would hurt the effect.

How much of a difference in stabalizing the pH does running the refugium light at night compared to the day?

Would such a small amount of light (13 watts) hurt or stress the corals at night?

What would you do? Run it during the daytime or at night to help stablize pH?

 

[ChrisRD]

The better gas exchange the system has, the less of a day/night pH swing you should see. Surface agitation, circulation, hood fans, protein skimmers, etc. all help with that. It's certainly possible to run a system with fairly stable pH levels without using the reverse lighted refugium.

To be honest, I'm not sure there's much benefit with a small fuge in that regard. I tried doing that in a system where the fuge was about 15% of the total volume and was filled with macros (lit by daylight PCs) and it didn't seem to have all that much effect on day/night pH swings. With a larger fuge I'm sure the effect would be more noticeable.

Personally, I've found a dosing pump adding kalkwasser at intervals through the night (on a timer) to be much more effective at that, although on a small tank I would be highly cautious with using kalkwasser.

All that said, I don't think a small amount of light at night will have any negative effect on the main tank. It's probably more of a preference thing IMO.

HTH