T5 lighting - What's your winning combo and schedule??

Fredm

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Hi,

Saltyfilmfolk you said :
"At 12in from the fixture it's close to 175 par per tube , youre close to 1000 par. At 12 in"

Whoah, i've 8x54w, so at 12" i've 1400 PAR ?? My fixture is at 7" from the water, with 20" of water's height. Do you think i could run only 8h of full tubes ? Thanks

Fred
 

Tautog

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I changed to ATI, 8- bulb, 3- Coral plus, 3- blue plus, 1- purple plus, 1- actinic. 2- Blue plus come on from 8 am to 10 pm, all lights are on from 11 am to 5 pm. Fixture is 12” above 180 tank, 2’x2’x6’. I had all lights on for 8-9 hrs, but had increased algae growth. I had problems with STN/RTN, but that stopped and 3 Acros that had it have growth, but infected areas are still dead. I’m having noticeable growth in my entire mixed reef. Presently, I’m dosing 200 ml/ day/ 2- part. I do everything manually, and tank is very stable, and feeding everyday 1-2 times.
 

Brandonsegula

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I would consider your phosophates to be okay. I wouldn’t go higher than that but I’d say you’re okay where you’re at. You don’t wanna totally strip phosphates out and lose color in corals. Also are you dosing alk and cal? Also your pumps are fine. Id say you have enough flow going through it. I have an mp10 and a gyre. I want to ask are you feeding your corals with benepets it fuel or acropower?
 

saltyfilmfolks

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Hi,

Saltyfilmfolk you said :
"At 12in from the fixture it's close to 175 par per tube , youre close to 1000 par. At 12 in"

Whoah, i've 8x54w, so at 12" i've 1400 PAR ?? My fixture is at 7" from the water, with 20" of water's height. Do you think i could run only 8h of full tubes ? Thanks

Fred
Why ati doesn't give much par data.

It does depend on age of tubes , the fixture , the tubes , the water clarity

In averageing or estimating , I've doing the rule of thumb at 12 from the fixture in the center peak of fixture is to count the tubes at between 150 175 par each. In air.
(I count by 200 and drop 30% actually )

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/g...and-a-whole-mess-of-data.200357/#post-2288276

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/par-readings-from-sunpower.223967/#post-2587657

Lower in the tank will change as refraction will lose you some par.
Rock reflects etc.

This is why I try to est the par I want at the top when selecting a fixture and adjust from there.

It's also one reason I think folks have success with t5 (besides proven put) they usually have more than they think , rather tank less (scared of the dimmer knob syndrome)
 

jimmyzhou

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I just upg my led with t5. I mean. Full run time are 10hr. But the t5 only turn on for 8 hr and 1 hr each for sunrise and sunset. Light system 15 inch above water. Around 250 under 8inch water. Use the new aqua life t5 with xr15 g4 pro. My coral are growing crazy. Soo much better. 3 coral plus blue and 1 purple plus. The raidon run 40% ab+ sps Test with par meter 220-250 flash with high flow
 
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I would consider your phosophates to be okay. I wouldn’t go higher than that but I’d say you’re okay where you’re at. You don’t wanna totally strip phosphates out and lose color in corals. Also are you dosing alk and cal? Also your pumps are fine. Id say you have enough flow going through it. I have an mp10 and a gyre. I want to ask are you feeding your corals with benepets it fuel or acropower?
I use the balling method to dose alk, mag, calc and trace elements. I prefer aquaforest for this purpose. I also carbon dose to keep nitrates at 2. I use red sea Nopox. Though they recommend not using GFO with the Nopox, I do use a little, as do many other reefers I've talked to. My Po4 was at .1, but when I added a small amount of GFO to my reactor, I was able to bring it down to .07. Better than nothing- I don't want a huge hair algae issue :) I test 1-2 times per week because I don't want my No3 or Po4 to bottom out.

I broadcast feed reef roids once per week, and I spot feed my anemones and larger LPS corals at the same time.

My corals shouldn't be starving. I feed my tank inhabitants twice a day and with my SPS at the top, they are likely benefiting from that too.

I think my gyres are fine and I clean them every week with a toothbrush so they don't get clogged. I can't see it being a flow issue, though I'll keep my eyes open and monitor it just in case. My softer corals are blowing around quite nicely though and I haven't observed any dead spots.

I am fairly convinced it's the lighting schedule I've put this tank on. I'll make small changes until I'm ultimately at 8-10 hours full intensity and no actinic period. If I am still observing issues, I'll start tinkering with other things one by one till I find the solution. It aggravates me to see even a couple of my nicer sized colonies suffering without something obvious to pin it on :(
 

Brandonsegula

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I use the balling method to dose alk, mag, calc and trace elements. I prefer aquaforest for this purpose. I also carbon dose to keep nitrates at 2. I use red sea Nopox. Though they recommend not using GFO with the Nopox, I do use a little, as do many other reefers I've talked to. My Po4 was at .1, but when I added a small amount of GFO to my reactor, I was able to bring it down to .07. Better than nothing- I don't want a huge hair algae issue :) I test 1-2 times per week because I don't want my No3 or Po4 to bottom out.

I broadcast feed reef roids once per week, and I spot feed my anemones and larger LPS corals at the same time.

My corals shouldn't be starving. I feed my tank inhabitants twice a day and with my SPS at the top, they are likely benefiting from that too.

I think my gyres are fine and I clean them every week with a toothbrush so they don't get clogged. I can't see it being a flow issue, though I'll keep my eyes open and monitor it just in case. My softer corals are blowing around quite nicely though and I haven't observed any dead spots.

I am fairly convinced it's the lighting schedule I've put this tank on. I'll make small changes until I'm ultimately at 8-10 hours full intensity and no actinic period. If I am still observing issues, I'll start tinkering with other things one by one till I find the solution. It aggravates me to see even a couple of my nicer sized colonies suffering without something obvious to pin it on :(

Yes I do agree with you on the lighting. Good luck. Let me know the outcome of everything once it’s done.
 

Luke Schnabel

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I run an ATI 6 Bulb, All ATI bulbs. Hung 14” above water, top of rock is 7” blow surface.
Actinic and Blue + 10a-10p
Actinic, 2x Blue Plus, Coral Plus 1p-7p
Max PAR with two bulbs 140
Max PAR with all 6 bulbs is 370 top of rocks.
My acros color up and grow well with this light except when my phosphate goes crazy which I’ve been trying to steady out.
 
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I run an ATI 6 Bulb, All ATI bulbs. Hung 14” above water, top of rock is 7” blow surface.
Actinic and Blue + 10a-10p
Actinic, 2x Blue Plus, Coral Plus 1p-7p
Max PAR with two bulbs 140
Max PAR with all 6 bulbs is 370 top of rocks.
My acros color up and grow well with this light except when my phosphate goes crazy which I’ve been trying to steady out.
So this is where I ask the question again.... does actinic have par? I had read that it did not put out much, hence why I felt it was safe to run the actinics for so long. I made the decision because I work from home and I love that I can watch the fish as I work.

If you have a 2 channel like me, and you run 1 blue plus and 1 actinic on a separate channel for a par value of 140, I would assume that most of this is coming from the blue plus...???

Has anyone tested par with pure actinic? At this point, I'm simply curious if what I read was full of s**t or not. I'm still going to change up my schedule to see if I can get better growth....
 

Cory

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So this is where I ask the question again.... does actinic have par? I had read that it did not put out much, hence why I felt it was safe to run the actinics for so long. I made the decision because I work from home and I love that I can watch the fish as I work.

If you have a 2 channel like me, and you run 1 blue plus and 1 actinic on a separate channel for a par value of 140, I would assume that most of this is coming from the blue plus...???

Has anyone tested par with pure actinic? At this point, I'm simply curious if what I read was full of s**t or not. I'm still going to change up my schedule to see if I can get better growth....

If i were to guess, actinic has very little par. But you could ask dana riddle. Hes the lighting expert.
 

RobertP

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Check out the BRS videos on the ATI T5 review. They took a bunch of par readings from the 4, 6, and 8 bulb fixture at different depths and even told you the bulbs they were running. I have the 6 bulb ATI fixture and using the same bulbs and their par measurements I am seeing success....granted my sps are young.
 

Bacon505

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you might considering checking other varibles other than your lighting. Acrtinic doesnt give that much par or any at all as far as i know. They’re there to help with the spectrum and making corals florescent. Running too much mechanical filtration can starve your corals
 

Bacon505

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Some of my corals are at the waterline under my 8x54watt ati with 4 blue plus and 4 corals plus with sb reef bar and reefbrite xho as supplements and they’re doing fine. So it could depends on how well the corals are aclimated to the lighting.
 

Bpb

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Yes actinic bulbs do have par. They’re visually dim because our eyes aren’t very sensitive to those wavelengths. One thing to take note, nearly all the light put out by the True Actinic bulb is VERY efficiently used by corals. Even if the par is a touch lower than the blue+ or a white bulb, virtually none of the light is wasted. It’s NOT a useless bulb to run. I find it very beneficial, you just shouldn’t expect a cheap par meter to read them well (cheap ones have a sharp drop off on detector sensitivity blow 450 nm).

Your tank is much larger so you may not have the “wall of light” I run, but your bulb combo is fine. I run a 8x54 watt ati sunpower over a 90 gallon. Light footprint is 48”x18” and the tank has the same footprint. I keep the light on top of an open top canopy so there is zero light spill and nearly none of it is wasted. So every square inch of the tank has direct primary beam light. I run 4 blue+, 2 True Actinic, 2 6500k whites. My timing is set to where the 6500k bulbs are set to come on by themselves. I run the 4 blue+\2 actinics from 13:00-22:00, and all 8 bulbs for 13:30-21:30.

So I have 8 hours of all 8 bulbs, with a 30 minute dawn and dusk of the 6 blue/actinic bulbs for a 9 hour total photoperiod. Lights are 12” off the water, tank is 24” deep. I have a large montipora and stylo literally touching the water surface, and acropora/montipora growing down as low as the bare glass in some areas that the flow has blown the sand away from. Growth is decent to great all around.
 
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I made my first adjustment - 15 mins less actinic starting tomorrow morning. This will take a while since I don't want to shock the system. What do people figure? 15 mins per day? 15 min reduction every other day? Each week? I essentially have to eliminate 6 hours of actinic....
 

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