Kessil a360x Intensity Setting

[jta51reef]

Recently upgraded lighting on my 40B mixed reef. Previously had Kessil a360x and added Aquatic Life T5 Hybrid to it. Looking for suggestions on Kessil intensity setting as well as duration of T5 each day. Many videos out there but none seem to address this for me that I’ve seen so far! Suggestions please and thank you!!
@rwreef

 

[rwreef]

Curious if anyone ramps down LED lights during peak times with T5s on...

 

[1Clown]

These Kessils are very powerful, best thing to do is hire a par meter and set it based on readings.

 

[hsingh]

be very careful with the violet settings on the a360x. I unfortunately went with the BRS recommendation to keep violet at 100%, this ended up growing some corals, but they lost their colors. Any new LPS that i added, would die of stress and Brown Jelly Disease. Also lost a huge leather, and only after a while did i realize that it was all due to the violet setting. Took it down to less than 50% and now colors are coming back and new LPS additions are not stressing out. Intensity seems to be ok, just be careful with the Violet

 

[hobbyreefer]

@hsingh why do you think the violet caused color loss? Is there another thread outlining this?

 

[mindme]

be very careful with the violet settings on the a360x. I unfortunately went with the BRS recommendation to keep violet at 100%, this ended up growing some corals, but they lost their colors. Any new LPS that i added, would die of stress and Brown Jelly Disease. Also lost a huge leather, and only after a while did i realize that it was all due to the violet setting. Took it down to less than 50% and now colors are coming back and new LPS additions are not stressing out. Intensity seems to be ok, just be careful with the Violet

Interesting. Are you sure it was the color and not the intensity?

 

[jta51reef]

These Kessils are very powerful, best thing to do is hire a par meter and set it based on readings.

Noted. I know every tank is different so this is probably best to do! Thanks!

 

[jta51reef]

be very careful with the violet settings on the a360x. I unfortunately went with the BRS recommendation to keep violet at 100%, this ended up growing some corals, but they lost their colors. Any new LPS that i added, would die of stress and Brown Jelly Disease. Also lost a huge leather, and only after a while did i realize that it was all due to the violet setting. Took it down to less than 50% and now colors are coming back and new LPS additions are not stressing out. Intensity seems to be ok, just be careful with the Violet

Thank you! Do you run your intensity pretty high? What size tank do you have?

 

[hsingh]

Interesting. Are you sure it was the color and not the intensity?

Yup, sure. It is not what I expected... tank has been going for about 18 months now. I was at the stage where anything I put in just grew! Stopped buying any multihead LPS as within a month I would get multiple heads grow. zoas were growing well, I only had issues with growth rates on acros (Monti’s and acans were growing well). So after watching a BRS video on Kessil settings , I upped my violet to 100% as recommended. Then first I started to spot that my corals started loosing color, my ny knicks torch was no longer gold, the dragon soul was different in color, a pink goniopora was no longer as vibrant as it used to be. My leather started to disintegrate... I thought it was some water parameters issue. Got an ICP test done and all was ok. Once my leather disappeared, The Acans started to go. Ended up with some space in the tank where I could put some more corals, not thinking much I went and got a multiple head black sunset torch and a ultra long tentacle plate (I had a standard plate in the tank and it was ok). The new corals opened up within days and I thought all was good. Then I see the black sunset start to disintegrate. Took it out and it had the smell of BJD. So cut some heads and tried various things to recover but no joy. Then the ultra long tentacle plate started to go. Took it out of the tank into a qt but it never recovered. I went back to my coral guy and he said all his corals were fine, he gave me an additional black sunset for free to try and then even that disintegrated. At the same time, I bought another long tentacle plate... and that’s when I saw the issue. This plate was fully open in the morning and started to close during the day. I had never changed my intensity settings, only my violet so while it was looking stressed (the tentacles had hardened up and no longer swaying), I started taking the violet numbers down. Almost immediately the plate started to look back as normal. So took the violet all the way down to 30% peaking at 50% and all is better. Recently added some new corals that are doing well. Now as I type this, perhaps I should have dropped the intensity if I increased violet? Not sure. I did loose a lot of coral due to that violet change :-(
Interestingly I have a GSP Rock and use that as my canary. All the gsp had changed color and was brown and not green! Ever since I changed the violet settings, the green has started to come back??
Oh tank size is a 160g with a t5 hybrid setup of 4 t5s and 4 Kessil a360x. I tend to change my intensity throughout the day to 70% at the top end. The T5s are either on or off (do not have the variable dim option). Glad that I got to the bottom of this issue!

 

[saltwaterpicaso]

i doubt it was from the uv it self it was more than likely the shock of cranking it way up all at once and not slowely acclimating them to it. and the higher par it was producing.

 

[hsingh]

Perhaps, the quick change could be the thing, but the corals should have recovered in a few weeks no? They started to grow more but lost colors. I have also seen my nitrates/phosphates go up, so it may not even be the lights. I will try again once the nitrates/phosphates are taken care of. Will report back

 

[Reefman71]

@hsingh why do you think the violet caused color loss? Is there another thread outlining this?

I rented a PAR meter and the violet had almost the same effect as the intensity.