SPS problems with ai sol

[Flameangel08]

Hi everyone, i have a 100 gallon rimless with 30 gallon sump. tia skimmer rated for 150 gallon. 2 mp10's two koralias and a return pump thats 1100 gph. I also have a uv sterilizer 25 watt. My params are near perfect. phophate at .03 ammonia and nitrate undetectable by seachem. calcium 480 and alk fluctuates 9.7-10.3. I dose brs two part manually. I dose zeostart 3 and microbacter 7 to reduce nutrients. this is my problem.... I have 11 sps corals. only 5 of them are doing good. the rest are all browned out. I have placed them high, low, middle etc. nothing works. My ai sols are 8 inchs above water line. I have them ramp up to white 64% blues to 50%. for 5 hours then ramp down to white 1, blues 10. then they are off for the night at 9:30 PM. I think it is my lights. is there anyone with sols that had brown sps but colored them up? I would like to add that these corals have great P.E. My tricolor acro is very nicely colored but has brown polyps.... This is very frustrating to me :/. Please help!!!

 

[mgdth]

How long have they been under the LED's and what were they under prior?


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[show time]

By looking at your tank it look kind of new. how long have it been running?

 

[ReefLEDLights]

The AI Sol is only

-8 XP-G Cool White 6K
-8 XP-E Royal Blue 450-465nm
-8 XP-E Blue 470-480nm

With out a direct par measurement you are looking at the rough equivalent to a 175-250 watt MH depending on your optics.

AI is a quality fixture using quality parts. That said I would of gone with a slightly different recipe to optimize looks.

If you can borrow or rent a PAR Meter you want to see about 150-200 on the sand bed.

Sanjay Joshi recommends a minimum of 100 with the caveat of more light demanding (SPS) corals placed higher up. If I were to guess you might not have enough light. Two AI Sols are perfect for a 55 gal tank.

Lots of factors determine SPS colour.

As far as lighting the best SPS tanks I've seen and my personal experience is you want around 200-400 PAR.

Photo-inhibition in some species can start at 500 PAR. There is a lot of debate on spectrum but if you limit the warmer colours aka full spectrum and up the intensity once your corals are acclimated their colour will improve. Some add different colours like Red and Green to improve the looks. Others increase the 420-450nm. Its two different camps.

I base this opinion on the spectral graph of the Radium MH Bulb and my personal experience.

Hope this helps

Bill

 

[jduck]

How many fixtures? distance from water? Tank dimensions?

 

[-Logzor]

I run mine at 100% RB 100% B 30% W. The fixture is nearly 24" above the aquarium, so the corals are more than 30" away from the light. I had really good color for awhile but this is my QT tank and I neglected doing water changes and they are now not as colorful. I once tried to boost the white up to 60% and many of the acros turned very pale. The optics are so tight on this unit you have to raise it up really high to get good coverage and to prevent laser-death-beams of LED lights. I hope this helps. This is a single fixture high above a 40B.

I would try raising your lights cranking up the blue and royal blue and turning the whites down to 30% or below.

You could also try doing a small daily water change on your system over the next few weeks to see if your corals improve. I try to do a 5g water change on my 180g system every day, I've had really good results. If your colors improve this may prove that lighting is not the issue.

 

[kes]

perhaps the intensity of the light is too strong for the SPS, try lowering a bit.

 

[Flameangel08]

okay so i have 2 units placed (as of today) 12 inches above water line. it used to be 8 inches. the tank is about 4.5 months old. I have two islands placed directly under the lights to be able to not need 3 units. I noticed that the only colors coming from my sps are greens. My birdsnest, monti cap, stylophora and tricolor all show green. My other sps are brown like my pink birdsnest for instance. I would also like to mention that the brown corals came from liveaquaria and uniquecorals. The colorful ones I bought from an LFS. I will get a par meter today. How do I go about using it? Thanks guys!

 

[Flameangel08]

That picture is not too recent but the only one i had on hand.

 

[jduck]

Over my 60g frag tank, I had 2 AI sol fixtures 12" off water. The frags were only 4-6" deep and running 30 white, 80 blue. All optics had been changed to 70 deg. Now I run 2 vega and 1 AI sol.

Over my 90 I use to run 4 AI sol, mounted 8" above tank & corals were in top 10" of tank. 70 white, 90 blues

The 40deg optics create a 8.8" cone @12", 13" cone @18"
70 deg optics create 16.8" cone @ 12", 25.2" cone @ 18".

If lights are too strong the corals will bleach and turn white, by saying that they are brown leads me to believe that they are not getting enough light to color up.

 

[Flameangel08]

are two mp10s and two koralias enough flow? maybe thats the problem?? I have these lights ramped up to 70 white 80 blue. I think my lps arent liking that. Here is an updated picture as of today.

 

[jduck]

If they were under non LED lighting @ LFS and you move them to LED they can turn brown on you. Had that happen to my whole tank when I switched from t5's to led. As long as they are growing they are healthy. If after several months they don't get color then consider moving them.

 

[jedimasterben]

As far as lighting the best SPS tanks I've seen and my personal experience is you want around 200-400 PAR.

Photo-inhibition in some species can start at 500 PAR.

Just wanted to mention that photoinhibition of the most light-tolerant corals, the pocilloporids, starts at just over 300 PAR - anything more than that is wasted as heat inside the coral through the xanthophyll pigment cycle. For deeper-growing corals, the limit is usually around 150 PAR.



OP, do this - cut your light by least 1/3. Leave it like that for at least two weeks. Raise it by 5% either once per week or once every other week and see how your corals respond. LEDs are a very direct point-source light, compared to the flooding light of a halide with a large reflector, or ultra-distributed light like linear fluorescents, and because of that, localized PAR numbers right under the LEDs can be very, very high, while in other places it would be lower.

 

[ReefLEDLights]

True but in other corals may start around 500 PAR. A lot of corals are exposed to much more than this in the shallow reef.

Here is an interesting read http://www-personal.usyd.edu.au/~cox/pdfs/nat_preprint.pdf

I've seen many SPS Tanks and the good ones had a lot of light....More than 300 PAR. The above study suggests that the coral adapt by developing Florescent Pigments to reflect excessive light.

Deeper corals are more bland. As far as heat there is no IR in LEDs unlike MH and natural sunlight.

I have my lights max for only four hours a day.

Just some food for thought.

Bill