Daylight Savings Question

[StevenSeas]

So this past weekend I got to thinking when it comes to daylight savings and your reef what do you do for your lighting? I thought well I will just change the programing so that the hour starts and finishes the way it was. But that could stress out our fish and corals just like it does us, not to mention they are dependent on it for energy and food as well. On the flip side I set my viewing hours based on when I will be able to get max viewing time and the most viewing time under actinics and daylight savings throws that off by an hour so I dont want to do that.

I ended up just switching it an hour and forgetting about it since 80% of my stuff is new from the swap anyways no big deal. But it brought up an interesting question in my mind, and I was curious what do the rest of you do for this?

Also does anybody have a LED/controller/anything that would say over a week or other set period of time just slowly adjust the photoperiod for the tank?

[Zack]

I usually change the times on the light and change the programming so it matches the "original" schedule. Usually I'll lose some viewing time but for me, consistency is key. I found when I used to do it by just changing the controller, corals seemed to be "stressed" because they were used to opening and/or closing at a certain time.

[StevenSeas]

So for example if you lights were off at 8pm prior to springing forward then afterwards the time off would be 7 pm? And then fir fall back it would be back to 8 pm?

[Zack]

Yeah so basically my lights ignore DST. I just adjust the clock on my controllers to read the correct time because I'm super OCD about that haha. It literally killed me that my RKL ran a few minutes fast a week compared to my AI controller.

When I used the director, I did find it neat to see it slowly adjust my sunrise/set times as the seasons went on. I think IMO that was the nicest my tanks ever looked, but it would be too difficult to emulate without the controller adjusting every day. But the rise/set times changed every day. It was really neat.

[rrasco]

I changed mine because I didn't want my house to stay lit up until 1am. Never seems to have an effect on the inhabitant.