Acclimating SPS to LED Lighting: What to do and when to do it?

[revhtree Verified Admin]

I thought this would be a great question, answer and tips topic!

1. How do you acclimate your SPS corals to LED lighting and how long does it take? (please specify for acros, montis etc. if you do anything differently) What is your method?

2. What are some valuable things you have learned acclimating sps corals to LED lighting both good and bad?

image via @WWC

 

[Crabs McJones]

When I made the switch to my kessil leds, the units came with an acclimation program. I created the program I wanted to run. And then put the acclimation setting on. So this ran my program but at an extremely reduced intensity. Over the course of 4 weeks, the unit slowly increased the intensity until it reached my present program.
I think acclimating to leds is a great idea as those little diodes are alot more powerful than people give them credit for. Just look at some of the par tests, some led units are putting out upwards of 700 par. And to blast corals with high numbers like that right away by an inexperienced first time led user, can cause disastrous results.

 

[AdamNC]

Any new SPS, doesn’t matter the type, I put on the sand bed for a day or two. After that they go straight on either of my racks which are placed in the front left or right corner of my tank. I leave them there until I see encrusting on the plug. After a week or so then I move them to their permanent spot. I have about a 90-95% success rate doing this.

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

I have several that I have had in my frag tank for a couple weeks under T-5 and at very low par levels. I moved them to the sand bed currently but plan to start moving them up over the next few weeks.

 

[leepink23]

I have aquatic life hybrid with radions, I start them on my frag rack very low for a week then slowly go up higher with the rack until I get pars close to where they will be mounted. I watch them 3-4 weeks before mounting to rock. I do that for all sps

 

[Scorpius]

I cut them off the frag plug and glue them in their permanent spot. lol. I have better luck this way because I found constantly moving Acropora around stressed them out more.

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Thanks for the input and BUMP for more!!

 

[Da8]

As mentioned when switching from t5 to radion, using the aclimmation programme and being very cautious when increasing the intensity.

It took over 5 months to get to the desired intensity.

When I buy a new SPS it spends about a week in the sand so I make sure it gets polipped :)

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

As mentioned when switching from t5 to radion, using the aclimmation programme and being very cautious when increasing the intensity.

It took over 5 months to get to the desired intensity.

When I buy a new SPS it spends about a week in the sand so I make sure it gets polipped :)

Do you not worry about all the other sps corals that are acclimated to the higher lighting already?

 

[Da8]

Do you not worry about all the other sps corals that are acclimated to the higher lighting already?

I always worry about everything.
In my opinion (I'm not very technical on these issues) my worry was ore for the intensity of both the general illumination of the tank and speccially the focused intensity of the led in some sps that may be just under a led. If we started with the full intensity we have risk of burning that animal.

For me qualilty led illumination has more focused PAR than T5 which spreads quite better.

Therefore the importance of starting with lower intensity , that probably will match mostly the starting point we had when we used T5.

 

[MTBake]

I try to place the coral in its final spot within 2 weeks. Some can be within days of receiving to right at the top of my rocks. Right now, I'm out of room on the rock work so I have a dozen or so acros living on frag racks little more than half way up my glass. Looks bad but they're happy so I'm content.

All that said, I swapped my Kessil/T5 hybrid for a metal halide just last night. No acclimation. Just going for it.

 

[cracker]

great topic I hope there are more Op's. Can I assume the same goes for t'5 lighting? I hope @revhtree Starts a poll on T's also.
I have T5 Lighting & just recently I'm confident try an SPS.

 

[Porpoise Hork]

I started with LED on my old tank, but it was a pieced together light bar that wasn't really best for reef tanks. Then I went to my 75G I got the Reef Breeder V2+ and dialed them in mirroring the CoralLAb AB+ mapping, but ran it at 30% intensity. This put my PAR levels near what my old light was producing. Then over the span of 4 weeks I increased the intensity where I am now at 50% of the CoralLab settings for the Radions. This is getting me 125 on the sand bed and 300+ Par at the top of my rockwork

When looking to add new SPS I usually try to find out what kind of and intensity lighting they were under and where placed to get a better idea of where I should place them in mine. From there I just put them in the zone that is the closest match to the source tank and monitor their color and polyp extension for any signs of stress/bleaching.

So far I have had very good success with coloration in my monti's, digi's, elkhorn, Stylio's. The one Acro I placed just did not do well. Not sure if it wasn't getting enough light or what. It bleached out after a couple of weeks and never recovered.

 

[Brew12]

I only bother with acclimation for SPS that will be on the top 1/4 of my tank. I use a 2 week acclimation feature in my Mitras reducing my peak lighting by 20% and letting it ramp back up automatically. This way I don't have to worry about forgetting to change my light settings back.
I don't run my tank as bright as many others, so I don't worry about acclimation any more than that.

 

[madweazl]

Straight to the desired spot with no acclimation. I haven't lost an acropora due to this yet nor have I observed any stressed out (18-20 in the tank). With that said, PAR in my tank is below 350 and it only peaks for about three minutes per day (constant ramp from 0 to my max setting and back down to 0). Additionally, the acropora I purchase come from a few trusted sources that have very similar water parameters to my own and two of them have considerably higher PAR than my own. One source is MH/T5, the other is LED (Radion only) in the display and his frags are under eight bulb T5.

 

[MnFish1]

I cut them off the frag plug and glue them in their permanent spot. lol. I have better luck this way because I found constantly moving Acropora around stressed them out more.

I do this as well. In addition I have a par meter. I try to ask the store at what par they keep their corals. I try to match it if possible.

Generally, though I have not found lighting to be a big issue though it’s somwthing often blamed.

 

[MnFish1]

by the way I only select coral frags grown under led. I also only buy locally so the corals are probably less stressed. The par on the top couple inches of my tank is 600 to 700. On the sand it’s 150 to 250 at the brightest part of my day. I find that higher flow allows higher light levels. Also keep my alk at 7.5 -8

 

[Mal11224]

I've tried different methods. Staring at the bottom and raising gradually. Placing midway on a rack and moving that up gradually. What I've been doing now is placing them in a permanent spot and put my Kessils on acclimation mode and that's it. Best success with this method since I am not moving them around. Also, I think flow is just as important as acclimation.

 

[redfishbluefish]

I switched from T5's to LEDs in January 2012. A number of reefers put the fear of God in me about burning my corals with LED's and I'd need to slowly acclimate my entire tank. I built this crazy contraption to slowly lower the light units over time. This started at about 31 inches above the tank. You can see my black marks on the far sticks where every couple days I'd drop the light to the next mark. FYI, it worked just fine...didn't loose any corals.

 

[ESH]

Don't know if this is the best way to do it, but when ever I get new frags, currently I start them in my frag tank on a rack, about mid level in the tank, then slowly move them up about 1 to 2"s over a 4 week period. This allows me to watch for growth or any other random issues. Only downside to this is if I don't go slow moving the frag rack up, frags will pop up and out of the rack from sudden shifts in the magnet.

Prior to doing this, I had tried the sand bed then mount method, and got mixed results. Random currents, fish and other critters kept knocking over everything I placed in the sand bed which got to be annoying to keep fixing.

-Eric