Lighting while curing rock

[JMsAquarium]

Is it better to put lights on over LR while the rock is curing, or not? If yes, should it be top quality lighting stuff or would the regular actinic and white fluo tubes do?

[michaelg]

If you can, cure it in the tank.  I prefer lighting.  You want to do as much as possible to keep as much of the life, IMO.

[JMsAquarium]

Any light will do? Curing in the tank might not be an option if too much smell. My wife will have a fit  :p

[Larry Grenier]

Any light is better than no-light.  I have a few pounds of live-rock and base-rock waiting for future use in a 25 gallon tank.  I have only 2 little 18w bulbs over the tank but the purple corraline is spreading.  I even feed the tank (get strange looks from family... feeding my rocks :D ) and I see pods and worms running around.

[JMsAquarium]

LOL Larry, I get the same looks here. I am playing around with a few pounds of Fiji in a 10 gal, illuminated with 2 mini self ballasted compacts and I feed them too. My wife says that she is now 100% sure she married a very peculiar guy  :p

[pez]

People like to use lights on curing LR to "save" as much life as possible.  However, the only life you will be saving is photosynthetic life.  The ammonia and nitrite will kill just about all the non-photosynthetic animals, depending on how long the cycle lasts.  Generally photosynthectic animals on a reef need vast quantities of light, so any attempt at adding light will be just a warm and fuzzy for you than anything your reef animals can fully utilize.

 

With that said, I generally try to leave the lights off during the ammonia cycle, and start turning the lights on now and then during the nitrite cycle.  About 1-2 hours a day for the start, then I slow ramp it up to 4 hours or so (per day).  

 

The lower the light level, the more coraline algae will grow.  However, once the rock is in the tank and blasted with your real lighting, your nice purple and maroon coraline algae will bleach and fade away.  Over time it will be replaced with pink coraline algae, which seems to "like" higher light levels (although, too much light and you will get no coraline algae).

 

Be forewarned however, using a lot of light during the cycle can encourage macro algae growth that may be hard to eliminate once you establish your main tank.

 

-Tom