Built in timer

Right now I just have a $7 cheapy one from wally world that works ok, but it blocks the outlets next to it on my powerstrip. If I plug it directly into the wall, it blocks the socket above or below. It bugs me. I was thinking of investing in one of the above strips with built in timers, but would like to know if anyone here has used one of them. I'm a little confused about the portion that is daytime vs nighttime (the yellow and blue labeled outlets). What I think it means is that you would be able to run one component during the day and another at night, but not both at the same time. Let me know if anyone interprets that differently! Thanks so much!

I bought one from Home Depot w/ some extensions to prevent blocking.

Daytime VS Nighttime is for the tank w/ two different light setting. Regular sun light in the day time and blue light at night. It's for Saltwater tank.

I have used those timers and they were not very good IMO.

Dave



Save your money and get the digital version which is better, and which I use on my turtle tanks.

small ranchu, I looked on home depot's website and saw a couple of surge protectors that had extra space around the last one or two outlets on the strip. is that what you meant by extensions? or do you add extra extension cords? Thanks!

Thanks, everyone, for your input! Keep the responses coming if you have an opinion on this!

I just add extension cords.

I have two of those timers on a couple of my tanks, as so far it's worked great!

The white outlets are "constant," for anything that you want running 24/7.
The yellow outlets are "daytime" and the blue are "nighttime," so once you've got the timer set, the yellows will run for the set number of hours, and the blues will run for the rest. --So no, they can't run consecutively.

The main reason that I got this particular timer strip is that the light fixtures on the two tanks have both regular lights, as well as white LED "moonlights." So I wanted to be able to set it up so that when the regular lights aren't on, the nightlights will be.

The one drawback I've found is that I've got a cooling fan on the light fixture for one of the tanks, which I like to have running from the time the lights come on until about 15 minutes or so after they go off. So, because it's running for a small part of the "night" as well as during the day, I got a separate timer for it.

Oh! And also, if any of your cords have particularly large plug-ins (like the box variety), they'll block adjacent outlets on the strip because the outlets are fairly close together. However, you're likely to encounter this problem with just about any strip.

The nice thing about the digital timers that Dave (parkerdt) mentioned is that you can set the outlets for different times during the week (i.e.: have the lights come on earlier Mon-Fri, and later Sat+Sun, etc.) The drawback is that, at least where I live, they cost about $10 more than the non-digital strips.

I got a great timer at HD for about $20. I have my lights set for each day of the week. Mon -Fri (my work week) the lights come on in the morning & shut off when I leave. They come on again when I get home & shut off at my bedtime. (This way the fish have natural light all day long)

It also has a button I can press if I want them on or off at a different time but it doesn't mess up the "scheduled" settings!

I LOVE IT!! I have a few of the regular timers but this one is very high tech without being TOO MUCH.