Metal Halide Sunrise- just one of the many cool things I like about MHs.

[rkb]

Those of you that have or witness the firing of MH lamps know what I'm talking about. On my system I have about 200 watts of actinic starting the day's photo period. Then at exactly one hour into the day the metal halide will fire. Truly it is like a sunrise, first and slowly the argon will ignite with a golden yellow glow. As the argon increases in intensity the halides in the arc tube will vaporize from their cool condensed state and like the rising sun will eventually ignite turning the golden glow ever increasingly whiter and brighter till about two or three minutes into the sequence the lamp is at it's full power.

It's simply one of those little things that is very cool about our hobby-

[boyesreef]

it was the only reason i woke up way before i had to go to work.

[THEJRC]

he he, I know the feeling. I only get to see it on mornings when I can work from home now though, makes me want to change my light cycle up

[bluelife]

Thats why I start the MH first thing before power compacts which I think will shock the fish .

[boyesreef]

i had only the MH, so it was like the whole tank would wake up. the bulb would ignight and the fish would come out from behind the rocks, and after the bulbs were entirely lit the corals would slowly open. in about ten minutes after the timer turned on it was like the tank never even shut down. pure heaven. if it wouldnt disturb anything i would just have the lights turn on and off all the time aso i could enjoy it more often.lol

[CarmieJo]

i had only the MH, so it was like the whole tank would wake up. the bulb would ignight and the fish would come out from behind the rocks, and after the bulbs were entirely lit the corals would slowly open. in about ten minutes after the timer turned on it was like the tank never even shut down. pure heaven. if it wouldnt disturb anything i would just have the lights turn on and off all the time aso i could enjoy it more often.lol

I like the sunrise/sunset feature on my Solaris for this too.

[V]

so whilst were talking bout effects, have any of you simulated rains & lighting for your inhabitants.

[rkb]

so whilst were talking bout effects, have any of you simulated rains & lighting for your inhabitants.

I always thought it would be cool for a large system to have it's make up water delivered by suspended spray bars to simulate rainfall. Other than the gee wiz factor and the cool visual of drops of water impacting the surface viewed from below I doubt it would offer much in terms of benefits. I guess one could argue for the increase in disolved O2, but that's about it.