How close to the waterline did you end up adjusting these? Ever take any PAR measurements? What power are you running them?
Thanks for any info and my apologies if these were answered in the other pages of the thread!
See the quoted posts in this thread below for details on my setup.
Overall, I couldn't be happier with the color and growth I've seen since installing these lights. I've had to increase my dosing ~30% to keep up with the added growth.
I have had mine running for about 1 month. For the first week or so, I ran them on basically the default program pulled down a bit because I wanted to be sure I didn't over do it with my SPS and burn them, especially because I was heading overseas for a week shortly after I installed them. I noticed my pH not rising as high during the day, and my alk consumption went down during this time (I have a Reefbot monitoring alk daily). That was enough indication for me that I could amp things up quite a bit.
I've since settled on a program that starts with the default sunrise at 7:45am, ramps up continuously to an approximation of the Radion AB+ spectrum at 171W from each unit (I have 2 over my RSR525XL) at 10:30 am. That then holds until 1:00 pm where it then ramps over 30 minutes to 100% on all blue, purple, UV channels and 75% on the others (probably about 14k roughly). This peak is 201W on each unit. At 3pm it ramps back to a slightly whiter AB+ at 177W, then holds there till 6:30 pm when it ramps continuously down through default evening to default night at 7:30pm, then moon at 9:15pm. This gives me a good 8 hours of fairly high intensity light, peaking for 1.5 hours at a cool white. At this peak, I'm getting about 400 PAR at the top of my rock structure, about 5 inches below the water surface with the lights ~10" above the surface. The PAR at the bottom, center of the tank is 150-175 PAR at this peak.
Everything looks very happy with this, and my alk consumption has gone back to where it was with the Radions and T5 I had previously. I am seeing some definite color enhancement in many of my SPS and other corals. I credit the high UV for most of this.
When I get home tonight I'll post a screenshot of the overall program and the AB+ approximation.
Here's a snapshot of my settings. At the time of this snapshot, the lights are just starting to ramp down from the "after" mode so this is close to my approximation of the AB+ spectrum, just with a lot more UV and violet.
It's funny you ask this. I was just taking some FTS pics this weekend with my phone. Then I saw this post. Here you go. You can't see the lights in this shot, they're just out of the frame to the top. I have them hanging about 10" above the water.
I don't think shading is an issue. There is definitely some light dropoff in the corners, but this is an open scape mixed reef, so I'm fine with that.