Ramping up the lights on new tank

Avengerx77 · Oct 22, 2021

I have 60gal tank and I am running the Radion XR15 Blue. Tank is 19" height and light is 11" from water level. I am using LPS/Soft pattern at a 10% intensity, since I don't have any corals yet and want the chaeto in the sump to get as much of the nutrients to somewhere avoid an algae bloom in DT. I know is going to be inevitably to get to the ugly phase, but I want to give myself as less issues as possible.

Now, the thing is that I will eventually want to get corals, soft and LPS mostly, but I am not in a hurry to do so. So I want to start ramping up the intensity so when I get the coral it has a good amount of light and hopefully stabilize the light increase in the DT. Based on it, have two questions:

1. What would be the ideal incremental intensity to be done in the DT by day/week to get to the proper intensity level for those type of corals?
2. What would be the ideal intensity of the lights based on the corals I want to get and specs of the tank? Want to avoid getting a PAR meter as I feel is going to be use very few times. As this is the XR15, I feel I would need to get them closer to 80-90% of intensity at some point, as it is not as powerful as the XR30.

Thoughts?

blaxsun · Oct 22, 2021

1. See #2.
2. You'll need a PAR meter, otherwise it's just best guess (height above water, tank depth, Radion schedule and coral depth will all be variables).

Avengerx77 · Oct 22, 2021

Noooooo. Lol, in all seriousness, getting a PAR meter was what I was hoping to avoid. Unfortunately, don´t think around here someone will have one or a place where it can be rented, so was hoping if someone might be using similar equipment.

X-37B · Oct 22, 2021

Avengerx77 said:
Noooooo. Lol, in all seriousness, getting a PAR meter was what I was hoping to avoid. Unfortunately, don´t think around here someone will have one or a place where it can be rented, so was hoping if someone might be using similar equipment.

You can rent one from BRS.