Is there a benefit of 12 hour photoperiod vs 8 hours?

[snowballs99 13]

Let's say 50 par example
And then a 100 par example

CO2 injected.

Is there a good difference between plant growth rate, or just like a unnoticeable 10%?

 

[Minorhero 2]

8 hour is the standard. It's 'safe' and 'easy'. You can make 12 hours work with a bunch of caveats like you need to watch your fertilizer uptake because you are now outside what most fertilizer regimes have planned. You also are probably not actually looking at your tank for 12 hours a day so it could be a waste. If you do have it balanced then your plants are growing 50% faster then they otherwise would leading to more maintenance for you.

I've done it with low tech quite a bit where it's frankly easy with very low light levels (12 ish ppfd at substrate). But it's typically more of a hassle for medium/high light.

 

[snowballs99 13]

8 hour is the standard. It's 'safe' and 'easy'. You can make 12 hours work with a bunch of caveats like you need to watch your fertilizer uptake because you are now outside what most fertilizer regimes have planned. You also are probably not actually looking at your tank for 12 hours a day so it could be a waste. If you do have it balanced then your plants are growing 50% faster then they otherwise would leading to more maintenance for you.

I've done it with low tech quite a bit where it's frankly easy with very low light levels (12 ish ppfd at substrate). But it's typically more of a hassle for medium/high light.

interesting.
I always thought there was heavy dimishing return on everything.

I'm growing a bunch of buces so 50% faster is worth it since its not like I'll be doing any trimming for a few months.

 

[Minorhero 2]

interesting.
I always thought there was heavy dimishing return on everything.

I'm growing a bunch of buces so 50% faster is worth it since its not like I'll be doing any trimming for a few months.

As long as you can keep the algae at bay, it's fine If you are just growing bucephalandra it's easier to grow them with the stem and leaves above the water and just never turn the lights off. Or in a place where they get all day sunlight. This is how greenhouses grow all of our plants that can be grown emersed.

It's when you have a whole aquarium that you have to worry about balance.

 

[ElleDee 9]

In real crops there's research into what an optimum Daily Light Integral (DLI) is for a particular species, which is how many photons an area gets in a day, so it covers both intensity and photoperiod. Less light intensity over longer can be equivalent to a shorter, brighter photoperiod. There's a top end to how much brightness is useful though. Like, obviously you can't just blast a plant with the intensity of a thousand suns for one second and call it a day, and many (most?) plants have light sensing molecules that regulate certain processes and require some amount of darkness, so 24/7 light isn't ideal either. Up until you reach the light saturation point, more light means more photosynthesis, but beyond that the extra light can't be used and at a certain point it becomes very harmful (photoinhibition). IIRC, CO2 is typically the limiting factor for photosynthesis in terrestrial plants, so that's going to be the issue even in high tech tanks. I realize none of that answers your question though.

 

[snowballs99 13]

As long as you can keep the algae at bay, it's fine If you are just growing bucephalandra it's easier to grow them with the stem and leaves above the water and just never turn the lights off. Or in a place where they get all day sunlight. This is how greenhouses grow all of our plants that can be grown emersed.

It's when you have a whole aquarium that you have to worry about balance.

Tried that in the past. It's actually not worth growing emersed unless it's wholesale. It's not faster than CO2 injected, extremely easy to mold/fungus, and most buces have no color unless grown in like very low light.