Aquariums and soltices

[nvrEnuf]

So, I change my lighting schedule according to the time of year; recently pushing earlier by a few minutes a month with the upcomming time change in mind.

Thing is, my dogs keep better time than my clock, and a long time ago this got me thinking about the tank. The dogs want thier feeding schedule down to the seccond despite time change adjustment. Currently, the dogs ask for food 13-14 minutes before thier "7:00 PM" feeding. Should'nt this apply to my tank as well?

Considering most of our stock comes from the equator where light is straight up 50-50 why have I not seen ANY info on this?

Any input?

[Timfish]

Here I'm thinking how nice it would be if my cats would stick to a certain time instead of randomly waking me up in the middle of the night to be fed!

I've got two examples of corals adjusting to light schedules but I've never seen anything that would indicate a lunar cycle or seasonal adjustments. As far as I know though the only behavior in the wild that occurs with either a lunar or seasonal cycle is mass breeding which is still modified by solar cycles. One curious example I had of a coral following the sun was a bubble coral which received about an hour of direst sunlight right at sunrise would close at sunset irregardless of the time of year or at what time the 400 watt MH lights turned off even though the room it was situated in did not get any sunlight past about 1 o'clock. The other instance I have of corals adjusting to lighting schedules are the yellow stone polyps in my tank. I occasionally catch them breeding, see this post: http://www.austinreefclub.com/topic/12279-polyp-porn/?hl=%2Bpolyp+%2Bporn and with one exception it's aout 3-4 hours before the lights turn on and if the lighting schedule is changed they adjust accordingly.

[PeeperKeeper]

My husband and I were talking about the same thing in regards to the dog, but our dog does notice time of year changes. We were talking about how in the Fall she (there's two of them but Spirit is the instigator) always starts asking for her supper earlier as sunset gets earlier. We have to tell her, "I KNOW it feels late, but it's still 45 minutes until suppertime!" and then when we "Fall back" she is obnoxious about it for about a week.

I never noticed it in my tank, but I do change the tank lights with the time change because my tank is in my office lobby and I want the lights on when we open.