# Live Rock Lighting?



## Dandelyn

I just put my live rock in... how much lighting does it require, how long should I leave the fluorescents on, etc? 

I have a 29 FOWLR tank... currently just the rock in there, and I have no plans to put corals in there... I am just using the hood that came with the tank, nothing spectacular...

Thanks!

~A


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## ohturtle

Live rock doesn't need lighting unless you want to retain the color. The bacteria on the rock and the critters that live inside don't require any lights.


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## tilt86

Leaving the lights on is the worst thing you can do. My lfs told me it was ok, untill 2 weeks later when my tank was covered in green algae. I let my new 90 gal cycle with lights off for 6 weeks untill nitrates where down to 5ppm. No problems at all. standard brown algae, and cleanup crew grazed through it overnight. Patience is key, ask a spouse or kid or friend to verify your test results before you say your assumption. We tend to lye to ourselves on levels to make us feel better on adding stock. Good Luck!


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## Kellsindell

Dandelyn said:


> I just put my live rock in... how much lighting does it require, how long should I leave the fluorescents on, etc?
> 
> I have a 29 FOWLR tank... currently just the rock in there, and I have no plans to put corals in there... I am just using the hood that came with the tank, nothing spectacular...
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> ~A


the main reason you put a light over your LR is to encourage coraline algae to grow throughout the system. if you plan on keeping corals then different lighting is required, but for now some white colored bulb (10000k) is all you're going to need. you don't really want to encourage algae growth such as green hair algae which loves yellow lighting like 6500k.

Your fish won't care about the lights. when you begin with coral that's when your will start worrying about your lights.


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## jeffwee559

Ya, live rock doesnt require any light at all, only to encourage the growth or beneficial algae, such as, macro algaes and coraline algae (which is the attractive purple algae) but the coraline algae doesn't exactly need light to grown. If you're not going to be keeping corals in the tank then you won't exactly have to put any special lights on the tank, but if you were planning to then look into some nice saltwater lighting systems. Then if you put lights on the tank you might just be encouraging the unsightly algae like green and brown algae.

So live rock does not need light.


Good luck:-D


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## Highland lake13

I was going to start a thread about this but this thread answered everything!


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