How slowly do i have to raise my light intensity?

[Pvtgloss]

So I bought a par meter and my suspicions where right....... my lights are dialed down WAY too much. All the corals look good. Nothing dying but nothing really growing except the zoas, acans, and favites. Oh, and cyphastrea. I guess all the low demanding corals.
At the top of the tank I have a few sps. Stylophora, Monti digitata, monti cap and birdsnest at 140 par.
A torch and hammer mid tank at 70 par.
Acans and zoas on the bottom around 50-70.
I'm thinking I should write down the recommended par for each coral and adjust the lights. Then put on acclimation mode for a few months.
How long should I put on acclimation mode and at what starting percentage?
What are you guys doing to maintain the par meters?
I figure wipe down with rodi but what other tips do you guys have?
Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[ryanjohn1]

What kinda light? You can take them up over the corse of like a month

 

[mrpontiac80]

So I bought a par meter and my suspicions where right....... my lights are dialed down WAY too much. All the corals look good. Nothing dying but nothing really growing except the zoas, acans, and favites. Oh, and cyphastrea. I guess all the low demanding corals.
At the top of the tank I have a few sps. Stylophora, Monti digitata, monti cap and birdsnest at 140 par.
A torch and hammer mid tank at 70 par.
Acans and zoas on the bottom around 50-70.
I'm thinking I should write down the recommended par for each coral and adjust the lights. Then put on acclimation mode for a few months.
How long should I put on acclimation mode and at what starting percentage?
What are you guys doing to maintain the par meters?
I figure wipe down with rodi but what other tips do you guys have?
Any advice is greatly appreciated.

I personally just increase about 3% every 3-5 days.

As for the par meter, I keep a 1 gallon jug of rodi water at all times for rinsing out testing equipment and etc. when I use my par meter I simply just rinse it with the rodi and dry it off.

 

[minus9]

5% a week is fine and you can always go every other week if you like. It's so much better going slow than too quickly. Your corals have adjusted to the current light intensity, so slow is always the best move when changing anything.

 

[Pvtgloss]

It's a hydra 26. I'm thinking I may have to increase the light almost double.
I'm going to keep the rubber cap on the sensor during storage. How sensitive is the lens on the sensor? Will scratches and scuffs destroy the lens?

 

[Pvtgloss]

5% a week is fine and you can always go every other week if you like. It's so much better going slow than too quickly. Your corals have adjusted to the current light intensity, so slow is always the best move when changing anything.

So if my overall wattage is 40w. Just bump it up 2w a week?

 

[minus9]

So if my overall wattage is 40w. Just bump it up 2w a week?

I'm not sure if watts translate to % intensity, but you should be safe 2-3w per week. Observation is key here.

 

[exnisstech]

The hydra 26 has an acclimation mode. Why not go ahead and find out what settings you need to get the par and look you want right now. Then keep that setting and go into acclimation mode and reduce the % to get the par you have now. Turn on acclimation mode for a month or two depending on how much you are actually increasing and let the schedule run. Would be much easier than going in every week and changing settings I would think

 

[Pvtgloss]

The hydra 26 has an acclimation mode. Why not go ahead and find out what settings you need to get the par and look you want right now. Then keep that setting and go into acclimation mode and reduce the % to get the par you have now. Turn on acclimation mode for a month or two depending on how much you are actually increasing and let the schedule run. Would be much easier than going in every week and changing settings I would think

Perfect. Thank you.

 

[Mikeltee]

BRS did a segment where they did LPS par for a month and then full blast.

 

[DaJMasta]

My rule of thumb is less than 1% per day, but because of the way percents scale, it will be much bigger jumps on lower lighting settings (10% to 11% is a 10% increase). Getting to a full precent a day has ticked off/bleached corals for me, so unless you've got something that's starving for more light, that or slower is a good general pace. If you watch for the corals being ticked and immediately back off a couple.percent and wait a couple of days if you see that, you can probably avoid most of the risks of raising it too fast even if you happen to.

 

[Jekyl]

Takes a couple weeks sometimes for the changes to take effect. Going too quickly may end in you going too far and not knowing it. 5% every couple of weeks and observe changes before increasing again.

 

[kerbfish]

The recommendations here are very cautious, I have cranked lights up much faster for my tank recently and new sps frags. You never know which coral will be pushed over the edge.

There is always a risk of losing something but I would not take a full month to double the intensity not enough patience!

I was running my AI Hydra 26 lights at like 30% on UV and Blue light spectrums, its now up to almost 100% for UV and the sps has loved it. Good luck…