Lights or no lights while curing

[aussiefishy]

do you mean curing or cycling?

if you are "curing" the rocks, your objective is to make all dying organisms die off. light is not required in this period. but i do agree if you are trying to salvage the left-over organisms, you might want to have some kind of light on. if you are cycling a tank, you are trying to establish serveral things: to build up bacteria populations, generate micro-organisms in the sandbed (maturing the sandbed) and also, "maturing" the water in your tank.. and to do that you need some kind of lighting, and not the 100% intensity because lighting does generate/contribute to algae problem, but it is perfectly normal to go through the algae cycle (it is a part of maturing the water and generate the micro-fauna in the water). so algae problem is normal. but intense lighting from day 1 will likely contribute to "out of control" algae bloom. so my opinion is to gradually increase the intensity/duration of lighting but keep spectrum constant or at least suitable.

cheers