Been very ill, tank crashed. Advice on strategy to correct lighting for already bleached acro/montis?

kwirky · Nov 19, 2020

I'm looking for advice on how to tune my lighting setup, which I'll be finished putting together next week, and because I have bleached corals at the same time I'm looking for some help on how to configure things, so that I don't make things worse. A lot's gone on and I've had a hard time correcting things on my own, searching the forum for similar issues and reading advice given to others. There's a lot to go over here, at sorry for the length.

What happened:

My wife and I fell ill with resistant infections shortly after I began the process of upgrading my tank so it took a while to deal with the problems. I tried not to change more than one thing a week, to figure it what's going on, so it was slow. I'm pretty sure it was my lighting being too bright, resulting in nutrients too low (0ppm nitrate and phosphate for almost 2 months), and rotten food from the LFS which killed some of my fish, too. It's been a really really bad few months, being ill and dealing with aquarium problems at the same time. I've had a resistant fungal infection in the mouth, throat, and larynx for 2 months, and this week I developed a bladder, kidney, and prostate infection. Yeah, not good times right now, and I want to save my tank.

Before today I was running 3x A360X plus a 3 foot 4 bulb T5HO actinic over my reefer 525XL at a bad schedule. I was maintaining 300-400 PAR for the upper colonies for 6 hours a day and 250 PAR for the other 5 (under the advice of a local hobbyist). This contributed to the nutrient issues, dinos, and bleaching. A fellow, local hobbyist with a much nicer tank than mine recommeded 300-400 PAR and it bleached many of my corals & wreaked havoc before I could correct most of it. Plus there's opinions on YouTube if acros needing 500-600 par but I didn't learn until now what can happen with too much led light.

The tank's almost back in control. Most of the upgrades from the 40 breeder are complete. I have 3x A360X to work with already and 2x 60" Reef Brite VHO Actinic coming in next week finally (back ordered for months).

When I had the 40b I supplemented the Kessils with T5HO to eliminate dead spots on shaded parts of the acro branches, to great effect. I ordered 2x VHO lights because I read annecdotal accounts on here that 1 VHO actinic is slightly higher PAR than 2x T5HO. It's basically a redo of the hybrid I had before, but with more control. Bulb availability here is pretty bad for 5 foot bulbs, too, so I decided against t5ho this time around.

Tank shots, to get an idea of rockwork:

coraline algae barely grew on the lower 2" only dinos above that, contributing to my hypothesis of too much light.

There's Wall-E, our copperband, begging for food. He's such a pig!

Some examples of the bleached corals I'm nursing.

This one above is starting to show green polyps on the underside again, and the back part (not photographed) is gaining green on the flesh again.

This one above started bleaching last week. Because it bleached after correcting params & nutrients i clued into having too much PAR & I adjusted today.

This one above used to be in the upper regions of the tank, directly under a kessil, because a local hobbyist with a much nicer tank than mine said to put it in high par. Moving it to the bottom stopped the bleaching & the colour returned. The bleached sections now have hair algae. Color returned to this one quicker than others.

Params, Hubandry & Equipment Info:

Water params:

9.4dkh (rock solid. Been slowly dropping it from 10dkh between march and now. Target is 9dkh, same as my h2ocean salt). Tested 1-2x per week since day 1. Took a LOT of work to keep this stable throughout the algae blooms.
430 ppm calcium. Tested every 2-3 weeks, never had to correct it.
1290ppm magnesium. Tested every month. never had to correct it.
1ppm nitrate. Tested 2x per week now. nitrate dosing needs constant attention. Was zero for a long time, got under control by dosing dry fertilizers. Acros started to get their color back when I got this under control. Once I figured out my uptake I switched to a diy solution on a dosing pump.
0.04ppm phosphate, tested 2x per week. I dose to 0.04ppm worth if it reads at 0.00 with a hanna checker. Started dosing to keep above 0.00 two weeks ago. Not on a dosing pump because of fear of over dosing for now.

Lighting as of right now:

I'm running the 3x A360X on the following schedule, testing done with a Seneye. The T5HO is OFF because it was too hard to integrate.

9:00 am on: color 0, brightness 1, UV 0
1:00 pm: color 0, brightness 40, UV 15, 80 PAR at the top coral colonies directly under the lights, 40 PAR at the bottom colonies and extreme sides.
3:30pm: color 10, brightness 64, UV 30, 150 PAR at the top corol colonies, 80 PAR at the bottom colonies and extreme sides.
4:30pm: color 20, intensity 90, UV 50, 250 PAR at the top corol colonies directly under the lights. a green slimer frag's at 300 PAR. 120 PAR at the bottom and extreme sides.
7:30pm: same as above
8:30pm: color 10, brightness 64, UV 30, same measurements as the 3:30 point above
11:00pm: color 0, intensity 40, UV 15, same measurements as 1pm above.
12:00 am: off, moonlights run for 2 hours.

Lighting units arriving next week:

Reef Bright 5 hole hanger. 2x 60" reef bright XHO actinic. 60" t-slot aluminum to hang the kesslis from the hanging unit.

Water flow's pretty good, I don't foresee low flow being a cause for overheating. It's not blasting any corals with laminar flows, keeps the bottom pretty clear, and everywhere's pretty random.

2x Red Sea Reefwave 45, on the left and right glass panels. They're not grouped, each set to run on random. They're at 100% during the 3 hour max lighting period, 60% during the rest of the photo period, and 20% overnight. They're as close to the top as possible without causing a venturi. They're angled pretty high to cause the water to flow over the tops of the corals and not collide with any of them. These were added this week.
2x jebao SW-8. They're on the rear of the tank, about 1 foot from the far ends each, pointed 45 degrees inwards, and set to alternate at 100%, and an interval which stirs things up a lot, doesn't cause laminar flow, and won't be at risk of throwing water over the sides, about 3 seconds I think was what it worked out to?
2x Tunze 6055 pointed towards the rear bottom of the tank, pulsing every second, behind the rock work, to prevent detritus from building up in the rear.
1x Tune 6055 on the back middle, pointed towards the front, pulsing every second to keep the mid front stirred up & chaotic.

Nutrient Addition:

1 cube of hikari mysis 2x per day, fed in a plastic mesh feeder so almost all of it's eaten
0.5ppm worth of nitrate added via a dosing pump daily (potassium nitrate)
I dose 0.04ppm of potassium nitrate when it tests at 0.00 (tested 2x per week)

Nutrient Export:

The 100W grow light is shut down due to a dino outbreak which took it over. I'm leaving it off until I'm at a point where I don't have to dose. The display tank has the uglies again, algae's sucking up most of the nutrients.
There's about a gallon worth of sand in there with 4 nassarius snails in the little pile. I've held on to it for some biodiversity.
filter socks replaced 1-2x per week. I've gone from a softball worth of dino per week from the socks to a marble sized amount each week.
5x juvenile blue chromis
1x 5" long copperband pig who eats most of the mysis (I've had him for 4 months yay!)
1x full grown rusty angel
1x starry blenny recently added. I avoided one until the dino was mostly gone and I was seeing healthier green algae, didn't want him eating poison
rocks blown off with a turkey baster every 1-2 days. Quite a bit gets kicked up, despite all the flow detailed above. I'm still getting 4-5 little 1/2" sized patches of cyano here and there throughout the tank, on the rockwork.
2-3 5 gallon buckets worth of water change 1-2x per week. I razor the glass at this time. I vaccum the little sand pile at this time.

I'm thinking of doing the following. Please correct anything you think I should do otherwise.

Arrangement:

The kessils will be mounted on a 60" length of extruded aluminum running down the middle, about 15" apart.
1 reefbrite VHO actinic will go on the 2nd hole from the back. Manual dimmer, apex fusion outlet timer (hard on/off)
1 reefbrite VHO actinic will go on the very front hole, angled inwards slightly. Manual dimmer, apex fusion outlet timer (hard on/off)

Schedule & Settings:

The VHO will be tuned to provide 50-70 PAR throughout as much of the tank as possible
The kessil lighting schedule above will be dialed back 70 par for each period, throughout the 10 hour cycle. The kessils will range from 0 par at the top to 150 PAR at the top (from 80 to 250 par)
The VHO will be on for 10 hours of the day.

I'm nervous/unsure of the following:

What's a max par level for a coral that's currently white? What should it be dialed down to?
I'm finding that PAR's not equal between lights. 250 PAR at one setting can bleach a coral compared to 250 PAR at another. What's a maximum safe par, long term to aim for, for the Reef Bright VHO Actinics?
Should I run the kessils at 0 color, 100% blue? Or should there be some white in there? How will white/blue affect long term health of the coral? Is 250 PAR of kessil blue going to grow at the same rate as 250 PAR at 50 color of white? Is 250 PAR of blue more likely or less likely to bleach sensitive corals compared to more white?

Reefing Madness · Nov 19, 2020

jda · Nov 19, 2020

I would start with a the T5s alone. This is a higher quality light and less likely to bleach or stress corals. I would start with 6 hours and maybe a 15 minutes a day for a while. Get them up to 9 or 10 hours and have this do the heavy lifting.

When the corals start to respond, then add in some LEDs. You can bleach and stress corals with LEDs even at lower intensities, so go slow. Kessils are not high powered lights, so this makes it easier.

VHOs are powerful lights if you have good reflectors, so make sure that you get some. Otherwise, a lot of light is lost in the surrounding area. The same is true with T5s where reflectors make a huge difference - they are different sizes, so you have to get larger ones for the VHOs.

The difference in your lighting likely has nothing to do with the dino problem that you have , but that is another story for another day. Lights do not add nutrients.

Most of those corals look pretty close to death. I hope that they come out of it, but don't take it too personally if they end up dying. It is hard for anybody to have them come back... not impossible, but hard.

kwirky · Nov 19, 2020

jda said:
I would start with a the T5s alone. This is a higher quality light and less likely to bleach or stress corals. I would start with 6 hours and maybe a 15 minutes a day for a while. Get them up to 9 or 10 hours and have this do the heavy lifting.

When the corals start to respond, then add in some LEDs. You can bleach and stress corals with LEDs even at lower intensities, so go slow. Kessils are not high powered lights, so this makes it easier.

VHOs are powerful lights if you have good reflectors, so make sure that you get some. Otherwise, a lot of light is lost in the surrounding area. The same is true with T5s where reflectors make a huge difference - they are different sizes, so you have to get larger ones for the VHOs.

The difference in your lighting likely has nothing to do with the dino problem that you have , but that is another story for another day. Lights do not add nutrients.

Most of those corals look pretty close to death. I hope that they come out of it, but don't take it too personally if they end up dying. It is hard for anybody to have them come back... not impossible, but hard.

In response to the vho statement, they're reef brite vho LEDs, not vho florescent.

The dinos weren't caused by the lighting but giving the dinos a lot of light to photosynthesize with while blasting the corals with the same light was a recipe for disaster. I witnessed a dose of 2ppm nitrate reduce to 0.00plm in less than 24 hours and during my illness, the nitrates were at 0 for weeks. The dinos thrived while the corals ejected their zooxanthalae. The nutrient imbalance would have been less stressful on the Coral if the tank had 150-200 par of light and not 300-400.

I'm going to monitor the Corals for the next 48 hours and if things continue to do downhill and the remaining healthy colonies start to lose a bit if color I'll follow your advice and switch off the kessils and turn the 3 foot t5ho fixture back on. It's not a medium term solution though because the bulbs are a year old and nobody has replacements in stock.

I really wish the local stores would properly support t5ho. Led is not my first choice but they don't even have stock of bulbs on the shelves right now, and some of the stores have been selling ATI and giesseman off on clearance. Something about the shipping process and expenses makes them not want to sell them, it seems. I need to figure out how to get good at led lighting for the long term because it won't be around in my market within the year.