Increasing Lighting Intensity

[landlubber]

hey reefers,
after a rough 2 years of unbalanced nutrients, a gloves-off battle with dinoflagellates and the gha that followed I finally can see an end in sight. through all this I had to reduce my lighting down considerably and am looking to amp things up a bit again which leads me to my question, is a 5% increase in lighting intensity weekly too abrupt or should I stretch that out a bit more?

 

[Crabs McJones]

hey reefers,
after a rough 2 years of unbalanced nutrients, a gloves-off battle with dinoflagellates and the gha that followed I finally can see an end in sight. through all this I had to reduce my lighting down considerably and am looking to amp things up a bit again which leads me to my question, is a 5% increase in lighting intensity weekly too abrupt or should I stretch that out a bit more?

Nope, 5% weekly is perfectly fine :) depended on light brand you can do 10% as well

 

[mcarroll]

No idea how much light is in "5%".

IMO use a light meter to measure changes like this. A simple lux meter like my LX-1010B will do it. Click #lux. :)

Change by no more than around 2000 lux per week IMO. Slower than that is OK too. :)

 

[jda]

Are you referring to harming the coral, or not "feeding" the dinos and GHA? If it were the corals, slower is a good idea unless you can measure the output... a few extra weeks is better than burning a coral and needing months to recover. If you are referring to not having dinos or GHA bloom more, this is likely depended on the N and P source and not so much the extra light intensity and you can raise them as much as you want if you have the other in check now.

Out of curiosity that has nothing to do with lighting, but for another purpose of studying P bound in aragonite... has your two-year battle been a result of starting a tank with dead/dry rock or otherwise used rock that could have had all kinds of P in it?

 

[landlubber]

No idea how much light is in "5%".

IMO use a light meter to measure changes like this. A simple lux meter like my LX-1010B will do it. Click #lux. :)

Change by no more than around 2000 lux per week IMO. Slower than that is OK too. :)

I do have a lux meter and will certainly try this.

Are you referring to harming the coral, or not "feeding" the dinos and GHA? If it were the corals, slower is a good idea unless you can measure the output... a few extra weeks is better than burning a coral and needing months to recover. If you are referring to not having dinos or GHA bloom more, this is likely depended on the N and P source and not so much the extra light intensity and you can raise them as much as you want if you have the other in check now.

Out of curiosity that has nothing to do with lighting, but for another purpose of studying P bound in aragonite... has your two-year battle been a result of starting a tank with dead/dry rock or otherwise used rock that could have had all kinds of P in it?

my concern with the lighting adjustments were with coral in mind.
as for the PO4 question, I started my system 2 1/2 years ago with dead dry pukani and made a big mistake in not curing it immediately. I eventually implemented a nutrient reduction strategy but caused problems there as well as i experimented with carbon dosing and found it quickly bottomed out my nutrients which set off the Dinos.
the eventual slow war was a matter of elevating nutrients and holding them to encourage gha growth. I'm left with a lot of gha but am a few months clear of the Dinos.

 

[Reefahholic]

I’m gonna ramp mine up by 5% every 7-14 days depending on how the corals respond.

 

[AdamNC]

Using a PMK I've been ramping mine up 10 par a week. Trying to reach 350 par at the top of the rocks and currently I'm at roughly 300 par. Just go slow depending on your lights. I almost killed a lot of sps by trying the 5% each week thing.