Is my light TOO bright?

[john.m.cole3]

My bad 36 and a half inches from the same bed

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[joshkirkland83]

My bad 36 and a half inches from the same bed

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Just do what your LFS says man.

 

[john.m.cole3]

Just do what your LFS says man.

Hahaha. Keeping it rolling. My favorite was when that guy was all like, you must be 12 years old. .. and your screen name suffix is 83...

 

[Sabellafella]

Any coral you transfer in, especially lps, take it to the sides first and move toward the middle. 33 inches down from the middle squarefoot of my ati fixture runs over 300 par and i cooked quite a few things already. I have almost half my collection of zoas stuffed in a corner because they dont appriciate it, but the other half does lol

 

[joshkirkland83]

Hahaha. Keeping it rolling. My favorite was when that guy was all like, you must be 12 years old. .. and your screen name suffix is 83...

Lol. I think an LFS told me one time to put your fixture in the water and let it float. You will get phenomenal growth.

 

[Sabellafella]

Lol. I think an LFS told me one time to put your fixture in the water and let it float. You will get phenomenal growth.

Lolol

 

[john.m.cole3]

Lol. I think an LFS told me one time to put your fixture in the water and let it float. You will get phenomenal growth.

Really? My LFS guy said to just open up a window and the sun will grow my corals fine b/c the sun grows coral in the wild and that's all they need.

Sorry guys, just some inside jokes

Back to the thread topic, cutting my intensity down, or in half, and bringing it back up as my corals tolerate it (using visual common sens aka PE) is my new direction. Please chime in if anyone thinks I could improve this plan.

BTW, you guys rock for all the fast responses this late at night!

 

[Sabellafella]

Really? My LFS guy said to just open up a window and the sun will grow my corals fine b/c the sun grows coral in the wild and that's all they need.

Sorry guys, just some inside jokes

Back to the thread topic, cutting my intensity down, or in half, and bringing it back up as my corals tolerate it (using visual common sens aka PE) is my new direction. Please chime in if anyone thinks I could improve this plan.

BTW, you guys rock for all the fast responses this late at night!

Dude if i still had my cell phone from 3 years ago, i had pictures of hugee "glass anemone aka aptaisia" that one of my local lfs were selling as a rock nem for 60 bucks. Oh no it gets better, then had a majano infested rock listed as baby bubbletip nems for over 200.

 

[john.m.cole3]

Dude if i still had my cell phone from 3 years ago, i had pictures of hugee "glass anemone aka aptaisia" that one of my local lfs were selling as a rock nem for 60 bucks. Oh no it gets better, then had a majano infested rock listed as baby bubbletip nems for over 200.

some folks be trippin. I have nothing but horror stories about my LFS. I buy all my stuff from a 35 year old seasoned reefer (20 yrs in hobby) who slangs corals/fish out of his garage. It always feels like a drug deal when I go over there :)

 

[Sabellafella]

some folks be trippin. I have nothing but horror stories about my LFS. I buy all my stuff from a 35 year old seasoned reefer (20 yrs in hobby) who slangs corals/fish out of his garage. It always feels like a drug deal when I go over there :)

Lolololol well hey me too, JUST dry good i get from my lfs

 

[mcarroll]

12,000 lux peak levels and a tilted light.

Sounds like that fixture really wants to be closer to the water than 15"!

How obligatory is the 15" mounting height? Depending on that answer....How obligatory is that ATI light?

Also, you should do something besides tilt the light to deal with the spill.

For one thing, that just lights up the wall behind the tank more and throws even more light out into the room.

For another, angled light is reflected off the water more than direct light, so to some extent you are defeating the work of your high-end ATI reflectors. (And throwing even more light out into the room.)

Mount a strip of something like opaque acrylic, or metal, to correct the viewing height issues.

Mounted properly (considering the viewing postions and using a little triangle math), it seems like it shouldn't have to be very big in most cases. And those are just two options, but maybe the easiest ones to make look nice. Opaque acrylic in colors is transluctent, so you might even achieve a nice decorator "glow" in about any color you might imagine that way.

 

[mcarroll]

My bad 36 and a half inches from the same bed

View attachment 20160324_001008.jpg

I see.

If that's your mandatory/best mounting height that you love (it's about how I like it) then that's definitely the wrong fixture for you just from a specs point of view. It wants to live right on the tank and be run around 60%.

I've seen a similar 4-bulb run a four foot deep coral tank. Wouldn't have believed it if I wasn't standing in front of it. Mostly softy/leather, but some hard corals too. Old tank, and happy. So your 6-bulb, which has much better reflectors and most likely ballasts, is very very capable.

What does your lux meter app read as a peak if you get closer up toward the center of the light? Try to get a reading up around 6" from the bulbs, if you can. (Readings might stop getting bigger before you get totally close depending on how long it can pick up all 6 bulbs on the sensor.)

 

[mcarroll]

Lol. I think an LFS told me one time to put your fixture in the water and let it float. You will get phenomenal growth.

If you check out Tunze's light, it's submersible, and indeed has a temperature sensitive power supply, so it runs significantly brighter under water.

...or maybe this was just some form of random LFS-bashing? (Off topic and - more importantly - way less fun.)

 

[Pete polyp]

Tank went into a diatom bloom today. 1 week after adding fish and coral

The tank looks extremely new, which might be the culprit

 

[john.m.cole3]

It's brand new (10 days old). I transferred all of my live rock and marine pure spheres to this tank to kick things off and was hoping the tank wouldn't go through a cycle. Had diatom bloom on day 9.

@mcarroll I will untilt the light and get a new lux reading closer to the fixture later today when the lamps kick on. Thanks for everything so far. You shine a new light on what I thought was a simple topic (pun intended)

 

[mcarroll]

I hope anything I know can help! :)

The subject of lighting, so far as I can determine, is literally infinitely complex. Especially so once transmittance to water enters the picture.

One factoid: the underwater lighting environment is orders of magnitude more dynamic than any lighting environment of the surface.

 

[john.m.cole3]

I turned lights down, untiltes the fixture, and brought it closer to the water line (10"). The 2 blue+, purple+,and actinic are at 50% for 8 hours, and the 2 coral plus are at 25% for 4 hours w/ an hour ramp up and down. PE is WAY better!

 

[john.m.cole3]

Well folks, I dialed the lights down even more. 35% blue, 15% white. still 8 hours blue and 6 hours white w/a sun up and sun down. I had to dial em back again b/c the polyps started retracting around 5 hours into the 8 hour light phase.

Does this mean I should shorten the light cycle down to 6 hours total maybe? 6 blue, 4 white?

 

[Scott.h]

If it helps you any these numbers are from aquatic life t5 ho 4 bulbs. Brand New. 2 white, 2 blues. And those numbers are higher then my LEDs on my display at 100%. Honestly I don't think you can accurately convert lux to par. Especially with actinic, so I did the next best thing. I Got measurements from outside, and from 3 tanks at the lfs. It will do until I decide to part with $350 for apogee.

 

[Scott.h]

Well folks, I dialed the lights down even more. 35% blue, 15% white. still 8 hours blue and 6 hours white w/a sun up and sun down. I had to dial em back again b/c the polyps started retracting around 5 hours into the 8 hour light phase.

Does this mean I should shorten the light cycle down to 6 hours total maybe? 6 blue, 4 white?

your numbers are slightly different from one tank to the other and you didn't acclimate. Also they are getting more light then before on top of that. It will take a few weeks to adjust. You have a lux meter so I'd get the numbers as close to what they were used to for now and give them some time.