Proper light managment

I have a small 55 gal aquarium in the making. It is almost through cycling. I have a light system consisting of 2 65 watt flourescent and 2 65 watt actenic and the moonlight. Some corals can live and do well under these light's. My question is how long in a day do I have these lights on to serve the corals and animals and fish better. How long to use actinic and flourescent or do I use them together all day. And at this point and time what light would be better to help in the area of algae. It is still brown but soon to be green and then onto coralline. thnx friends...

 

The best way is to simulate nature as good as you can. I would run the actincs about 14 hours and the 10ks or white lights 8-10 hours during the mid day. Some people would use all of the lights for the longer period either way works. Buy mostly soft corals-leathers zoas mushrooms and similar with PCs hard corals usually dont thrive.

As for the algae the best thing to do is have good strong flow through out the tank. Do water changes with ro/di water only, use a skimmer and do not overfeed. A newer set up will go through several algae blooms before it settles in.

 

From experience, since the tank is still cycling, try having the actinic come on in the morning say at 7 or 8 am (if the actinic are separate) and then after 2 hours of just the actinic (that represents dawn) have the daylights come on (actinic stay on) for 5 hours and when they go off the actinic stay on for 5 more hours taking you to 7-8 pm. Now, every week, increase the daylight by one hour adding it to the end, example, say daylight is coming on at 10:00 am (after the 2 hours of actinic) and going off the 5 hours later at 3:00 pm, add an hour so the daylight now go off at 4:00 pm. Each week add 1 hour until you reach 8 hours of daylight.
Your light scheme ends up; actinic on for 12 hours with first 2 hours alone in morn (dawn) and 2 hours in eve (dusk) and the daylight on for 8 hours in the middle (so to speak) of the actinic cycle.
I know there are other schemes but this one is very popular.