AI Hydra 26 Settings

[Riddler05]

Hey,

I have two Hydra 26's over my 90 gallon tank. It is a standard 90 gallon so I think it is 24 inches deep. I am keeping a mix of corals (everything from soft to LPS and SPS), but mostly SPS. I was wondering if anyone has advice on what percentage they run their lights on and for how long. Or better yet I was wondering if anyone has an example program that they would recommend. For right now I am more worried about growth then color. The tank is about 6 months old but everything was moved over from a 29G biocube, which was running with homemade LED fixture for a little over a year. Some people have recommended that I slowly ramp my UV up by like 5% a week until I get to about 50-75% but that seems kind of high.

Currently I am running:
deep blues and royal blues at 50% for about 8 hrs.
Cool white at 50% for 3 hrs and then 30% for the other 5 hrs
UV and Violet are both run at 30% for 8hrs
Green and Deep red and run at 10% for 8 hrs


I am not getting very good growth on the corals and I am wondering if it is my lighting?

Alk: 8.5
Ca: 420
Po4: 0.02ppm
Nitrate: 12ppm (I am slowly trying to bring this down with water changes and carbon dosing)

Currently I only dose about 400ml of saturated Kalk at night and it seems to keep alk and Ca pretty stable but I do see some fluctuations (plus or minus 1 dkH). I am working to try and stabilize this a little.

 

[kalendo]

How high is your lights?

 

[Riddler05]

My lights are about 10 inches from the surface. That is as high as I can get them with a canopy.

 

[mic209]

Crank those bad boys up! Over my 18" cube I run my hydra 26 at 100% for the blues and violet, 65% white, 85% green and 40% red and uv. I have it 9" above the water and I get around 150-180ish par on the sand bed. My highest rock that is around 6-7" below the water gets around 350 par. Don't be scared to run them at higher settings.

 

[Riddler05]

Thanks. Everyone warns of burning corals with LEDs so I was afraid they would be too strong but I will run them at higher settings now.

 

[mic209]

Thanks. Everyone warns of burning corals with LEDs so I was afraid they would be too strong but I will run them at higher settings now.

Make sure to use the acclimation mode when you turn up your settings. Do you have access to a PAR meter? I switched back to LED before christmas from metal halide, and I only did because me and a couple friends went in on the PAR meter. In my opinion, a par meter is must to get your LED's dialed in.

 

[Reeferdood]

I am runing 3 above my 180 and am having no issues with any corals being burned by them. As a matter of fact all of the corals in my tank are from stores that try to sell corals that are not healthy or dying. Everything in my tank has been nursed back to health using LED lighting. I have Monti's that are on the bottom that are growing just fine, so don't be afraid of LED lighting just do your homework as to where to place your corals....

 

[bigdwes]

Hey fellow reefers I have the Red Sea max e series 45 gallon cube and was wondering what would be some good light settings for the hydra 26 single it is right at 12 inches from the surface I only have two Zoe frags a ricordiea shroom and green star polyps as of right now I just don't want to burn them they are all at the bottom or as close to it as possible. Thanks for any suggestions! Forgot to mention new to led lighting always used t5

 

[Reeferdood]

This topic is debatable but I'll give you my thoughts...
I run mine 100% on all but the red, green & white. Those 3 channels I run at 45%.
This gives about a 14k spectrum that I like, so do my corals. Now, the Hydra 26 is a very powerful light for a 45 gallon tank so I would not crank that baby all the way up just yet....
My .02
Cheers!

 

[bigdwes]

This topic is debatable but I'll give you my thoughts...
I run mine 100% on all but the red, green & white. Those 3 channels I run at 45%.
This gives about a 14k spectrum that I like, so do my corals. Now, the Hydra 26 is a very powerful light for a 45 gallon tank so I would not crank that baby all the way up just yet....
My .02
Cheers!

My current settings are White 26% Red 8% Green 18% Royal and Deep Blue 60% UV 45% Violet 50% and 3:30 Ramp

 

[Reeferdood]

That sounds fine, there are 2 things that matter with your settings....
Is it the color that you like and how do my coals react to it?
If both seem to be good then all other opinions can be tossed in the trash...[emoji16]

 

[louienardi]

Just got me a set of hydra 26s..... Gotta do some research!!

 

[LakeCityReefs]

I was running a single AI Prime 10" above my 50 Ga. cube. About a month ago I switched to the Hydra 26 HD. I pretty much used the same settings as the Prime except now I had to consider that the Hydra had twice as many lights. I ran the acclimation for about 3 weeks. Every coral started perking up within 1 week.

Here is my current setting.

I am thinking about increasing the settings even higher. I will use the acclimation again for 3-4 weeks if I do increase the intensity.

 

[louienardi]

That sounds fine, there are 2 things that matter with your settings....
Is it the color that you like and how do my coals react to it?
If both seem to be good then all other opinions can be tossed in the trash...[emoji16]

Love the simplistic thought process. From what I've been reading it's easy to go down a rabbit hole with all the options!

Just got me a set of hydra 26s..... Gotta do some research!!

 

[louienardi]

I was running a single AI Prime 10" above my 50 Ga. cube. About a month ago I switched to the Hydra 26 HD. I pretty much used the same settings as the Prime except now I had to consider that the Hydra had twice as many lights. I ran the acclimation for about 3 weeks. Every coral started perking up within 1 week.

Here is my current setting.

I am thinking about increasing the settings even higher. I will use the acclimation again for 3-4 weeks if I do increase the intensity.

Cool. I'm going to have a look. I've started them really low at 20 percent. Switching over from halides and T5..... Hear so much about bleaching it's worrisome

 

[jsker]

Cool. I'm going to have a look. I've started them really low at 20 percent. Switching over from halides and T5..... Hear so much about bleaching it's worrisome

You can do a 2 month acclamation,

 

[drtrash]

Whatis thelightsspreadofthehydra26?

 

[drtrash]

Whatisthelightspread?Distancebetweenl

 

[drtrash]

Iamlookingatgetting2ona36in"tankandwonderingonspacing

 

[dragon99]

2 Hyda26HD's should cover a 36in tank well.

It depends on what coral you plan to keep, but 2 of them should work unless you plan on keeping SPS low in the tank, and even then certain ones might be OK.