How to properly acclimate T5's to current setup?

[Xandernfs]

I currently have an AP700 over my Reefer250. Lights are peaking at 45%. I'm in the process of increasing the intensity and am doing so at 3-5% increase a week. I just got an Aquatic Life T5 Hybrid to add to the AP700. I'm curious how I should acclimate my coral to the addition of the T5's. I plan on using 2 ATI Blue+ and 2 Coral+.

I'm thinking I'll start with an hour a day and then add 30 minutes a week until I get to the desired photoperiod? I have an Apex, so coding the length won't be an issue. I'm also going to put the breaks on increasing the intensity OR only increase 2% a week on the AP700. Thoughts?

 

[AndrewB]

Right or wrong, what worked for me was having my lights at a foot off the water with a 4 hour period first. After a couple weeks I was 10". After about a month I was down to 8" and currently increasing my photoperiod. Every change I made seemed to only make the corals more happy.

 

[jda]

Your plan sounds good. With T5s, they are not as much of a risk to make corals unhappy - you can usually just drop them on for 10 hours and stuff is ok. However, there is no harm in going slow.

I might suggest that you get the T5s going all the way before your ramp up the Kessil. ...on variable at a time.

 

[Xandernfs]

Your plan sounds good. With T5s, they are not as much of a risk to make corals unhappy - you can usually just drop them on for 10 hours and stuff is ok. However, there is no harm in going slow.

I might suggest that you get the T5s going all the way before your ramp up the Kessil. ...on variable at a time.

I've read that the Blue+ puts out a lot of PAR. Do the corals respond differently since it's not a single source point?

 

[jda]

There is hours of debate on this... Blue+ do have a good amount of PAR, but not as much as a whiter bulb would... Giesemann Tropic or other 6500k. This is most likely a quality issue with the LEDs having too many harmful peaks, lack of spectrum and/or issues with too focused of lenses... nobody knows for sure, but it is nearly unequovical that if you turn any LED up to 450 PAR in a day that corals will suffer, but if you put on T5s or MH at 450w PAR, then the corals will probably be OK. It takes more like 600-750+ PAR for corals to start to bleach under T5 and MH.

 

[rkpetersen]

I plan on using 2 ATI Blue+ and 2 Coral+.

You may find that 2 Coral + is far too much white light; I certainly did. :)

 

[Xandernfs]

I'm assuming that I can off set the white with more blue from my AP700?

 

[JBKReef]

I like the idea of adding 30 mins a week, however I would halt the AP700 increases until you've reached a full photo period. With Kessil Logic I would say add in whatever bulb combo you want then tweak the color of the Kessil to match what you find visually appealing.

I've been toying with the idea of adding the AL hybrid to my tank. I have a 93 cube with two A360's but a decent amount of shadowing. Would love some photos to see your progress!

 

[arafas]

I have 90 gallon tank with 2 26hd's. I added 4xT5's, what i did i ramped up slowly. So i set the T5s on the timer and run them 30min for 3-4days then add another 30min and so forth. Never lost anything