Lighting Question - How Long? (Pics)

[ibjhb]

Hello all!

I'm slowly starting to stock my tank; I don't have much in it right now. I'm slowly adding live rock as I buy some each week. The tank is 180 gallons and has an pretty powerful lighting system.

I currently have 25-30 lbs of live rock (I know, I need more) and a few anemones on one of the rocks. They seem to be doing well and I feed them every couple days.

I'm trying to figure out how long I should leave my ligths on each day.

I have three 400W Radium HRI-T bulbs (very bright) and 2 banks of 2 (4 bulbs total) purple lights (I think they are 6' long each).

Here's the 400Ws:

Here's more about my tank:
http://180gallon.blogspot.com/

Here's the whole tank before I started stocking it:

 

[ibjhb]

Found a pic of the lights:

 

[BIGgourami]

as of right now it doesn't matter.. even once you add the fish, it
s not very important. i try to keep it under 10 hours total (including 2 hours of solo atinic lighting) so like 1 hour just actinic in the morning, 8 hours of actinic and white max, then another hour of just actinic

keeps the algae down somewhat on my reef tanks

if it was just a FOWLR or a FO you could do even less than that

 

[Myteemouse]

I wanna see these anemones you speak of..
If they truly are real anemones they will need to run the MH lights.
Anemones need good light

 

[ibjhb]

Here's a pic of the anemones right after I put them in the tank (~3 weeks ago):

They aren't very open in the picture and when they do open they are roughly 2x as large. They seem to be doing very well. I'll try to take pictures of them later tonight fully open.