sgrosenb
Active Member
Hi folks,
I have a 165g 5x2x2 tank with a hybrid lighting system T5 and LED. I have 4xT5 (2x BluePlus, 2x CoralPlus), and 6 XR15 Radion Pro's with diffusers. The lights sit about 10" off the surface of the water. My T5's run from 8:30am - 6:00pm (9.5 hours) each day. My LED's are on the following schedule, with a ramp up of only blues and purples in the early morning and late evening, with a fairly full spectrum during the day from 9:30am-5pm (see pictures below that show setting).
My question is - am I blasting my corals with too much light, or too long of a light period? My max spectrum for LED's is 7.5 hours, and the ramp up and down are 3 hours in the morning and 4.5 hours at night. PAR is roughly 400 at the top of the tank, 300 in the middle, and 200 on the sand at full strength.
I'm keeping some SPS somewhat successfully, but they're not growing very well and some of the more finicky SPS (e.g. Sexy Corals Orang Passion) aren't living. I've tried 3 of the SC Orange Passion over the past 6 months and they've all died. Same with some other acros. Stags, my WWC Yellow tips, and my Walt Disney are doing fine, albeit not growing very fast.
A few different notes about my system - phosphates are consistently a bit high (0.1-0.2 ppm - I'm working on getting them down slowly), Nitrates are 5-10, Alk is stable a 8.0dKH, calcium and magnesium all good, ICP tests come back with pretty much perfect parameters and trace elements. I run a refugium with chaeto which grows like a weed, I have coralline caked on my rocks, and I run a skimmer 24/7. about 15 fish in the tank that I feed moderately - not too much, but enough that my phosphates and nitrates stay high enough (sometimes I dose N a bit to keep it up). Other than that, not much else - I try to keep it pretty simple.
Any thoughts are welcomed. Thanks!
Overall Light Schedule for LED:
Purples and Blues during ramp up/down
Full spectrum light from 9:30am-5pm:
I have a 165g 5x2x2 tank with a hybrid lighting system T5 and LED. I have 4xT5 (2x BluePlus, 2x CoralPlus), and 6 XR15 Radion Pro's with diffusers. The lights sit about 10" off the surface of the water. My T5's run from 8:30am - 6:00pm (9.5 hours) each day. My LED's are on the following schedule, with a ramp up of only blues and purples in the early morning and late evening, with a fairly full spectrum during the day from 9:30am-5pm (see pictures below that show setting).
My question is - am I blasting my corals with too much light, or too long of a light period? My max spectrum for LED's is 7.5 hours, and the ramp up and down are 3 hours in the morning and 4.5 hours at night. PAR is roughly 400 at the top of the tank, 300 in the middle, and 200 on the sand at full strength.
I'm keeping some SPS somewhat successfully, but they're not growing very well and some of the more finicky SPS (e.g. Sexy Corals Orang Passion) aren't living. I've tried 3 of the SC Orange Passion over the past 6 months and they've all died. Same with some other acros. Stags, my WWC Yellow tips, and my Walt Disney are doing fine, albeit not growing very fast.
A few different notes about my system - phosphates are consistently a bit high (0.1-0.2 ppm - I'm working on getting them down slowly), Nitrates are 5-10, Alk is stable a 8.0dKH, calcium and magnesium all good, ICP tests come back with pretty much perfect parameters and trace elements. I run a refugium with chaeto which grows like a weed, I have coralline caked on my rocks, and I run a skimmer 24/7. about 15 fish in the tank that I feed moderately - not too much, but enough that my phosphates and nitrates stay high enough (sometimes I dose N a bit to keep it up). Other than that, not much else - I try to keep it pretty simple.
Any thoughts are welcomed. Thanks!
Overall Light Schedule for LED:
Purples and Blues during ramp up/down
Full spectrum light from 9:30am-5pm:
