Viparspectra 165watt, Anyone using these?

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Nicholas Dushynsky

Nicholas Dushynsky

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I’ve been having problems with some of my corals not opening and can’t work out why so have lowered from 60blue 30white down to 10blue 2white for a while and see what happens, my torch already seems to be extending more.
That's quite a drop you would be at 260 par going by the graph, how high is your light from the water?
 
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Nicholas Dushynsky

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That's quite a drop you would be at 260 par going by the graph, how high is your light from the water?
Also how old is the tank and how long have you had it at those settings, I had frogspawn that bleached out when running them higher but I have a current issue with zero detectable phosphates.
 

Alec Byrom

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The tank was set up mid January and has had various problems Briopsis, cyano to name two but was looking really good I July until I went away for a week during the hot spell and came back to a tank at 87f.
I’ve since had a fan on a controller and had a steady temp but my red plating monti has bleached and half the Zoa’s don’t open but my hammer is looking good elegance looks good and the torch is not fully extended but looks good colour.
I was hoping the monti might come back if I lower the par and bring it back up slowly.
 
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Nicholas Dushynsky

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I think that is a great plan I had an issue with a montipora digitata, as when I went on holiday for a week I done the big no no and done a water change the day before. I changed it in a hurry and I didnt let the change water get to temp, and where i put the water in near the digi it was 5 degrees C lower so I came back to a dead white stick. Not happy. Then I lost all my other digi to zero phosphates, but I was chasing it as being a lighting issue and kept going up and down. I have now started feeding twice a day and my once always dead monti is regrowing and the colours look better. I just need to set and forget the lighting as now I know I'm over lighting my tank a little. So 50/5 is where its staying or maybe down to 50/2 as I like a slightly bluer light.
 

icejam

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I have my lights sitting about 14” off the water surface. My initial setting was B:60% W:10%. I ended up tweaking it to 50/15 to better match the 250w Radiums they were replacing. At that setting, I’m getting a peak of about 40,000 Lux at the water surface, which is roughly 700 par. A $15 lux meter off of Amazon is a great tool for getting these things dialed in without having to spend $$$ for a par meter.

In order to "convert" Lux to PAR you would need to know the spectrum your lights are in.
From what I measured with both channels at 100% I had 920 PAR and 34 000 lux, so 40K lux might be more PAR then you expect.
 

Semisonyx

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In order to "convert" Lux to PAR you would need to know the spectrum your lights are in.
From what I measured with both channels at 100% I had 920 PAR and 34 000 lux, so 40K lux might be more PAR then you expect.

Interesting! I’ve been using conversion factors from Dana Riddle’s publications and sort of guestimating about a factor of 55-60 for par:lux. After a week at these settings, I’ve seen a faint hint of bleaching on some of the sps that are 6-8” below the waterline, but nothing drastic. I’ve been feeding the tank a little more and those particular sps seem pretty content, just a little lighter in color for now. I figured they were getting about a 150-200 par bump which corresponds to the increased amount of light on the lux meter from the Radiums along with the lighter coloration of the higher ups.
 
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Nicholas Dushynsky

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This is my tank currently. I have blues at 50 and whites at 3. I have been dosing phosphates as it has been undetectable for over 4 months and things had paled and slowed In growth. This is as of last night. Excuse the glass, it is dirty. The so called dead digitata is growing back now. So I assume it's going the right way.
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Another update. (not great)

I have now stopped dosing 2 part now as my tank was thriving using kalkwasser in my ato over a year and a half ago.
Consumption got too high (1.5dkh) per day and things were growing really, really well. So I went over to 2 part dosing on a doser and things just stayed put after a while and growth slowed down, so consumption dropped and I was always having to adjusting the doser to stop it raising levels and keep it stable at the level I run at which it was, I've kept all my test results since starting this tank so I know the levels and the dates etc. of when it was running at it's best so I've tried to keep it at those levels as consistent as i can for the time of running this tank and I have still had issues.
Things just stopped thriving and the sps had started to pale, then had a cyano outbreak which as the pic shows I still have. I have tried water changes with siphoning out as much as I could, red slime remover, 3 day blackout, it clears temporarily then comes back after a few weeks.

Sps started to slowly perish then stn so I removed all the red digi as that was first to go and didn't want die off to feed cyano, then green/silver digi browned out and one colony at a time the rtn finished them off. I have removed all traces of sps I can, apart from what has encrusted and still has polyps on it. Its disheartening to chuck all the dead skeletons away but they were all from a frag pack so not high end corals and only £25, of which I made more back from selling frags of them.
I've now moved some hammers back in to it from my other tanks to fill the gaps so it doesn't look as empty.

Now I have been racking my brain as to what the cause could be of losing the sps for ages now by searching this site and speaking to my lfs owner to no clear defining reason.

I am struggling to keep the love for this tank going and am at my wits end, so what to do next?

I have gone back through all my tests and
notes I have made over the last nearly 3 years for this tank, I found when i first had to start dosing 2 part manually on a daily basis which got annoying quickly, then I changed it to the kalkwasser in my ato and things took off, the plus being I didn't have to dose manually anymore.
Then things grew too fast and kalk didn't cut it so went doser route but looking back I wish I'd kept kalk going as well as I think that helped alot.

So going forward now I've actually gone backwards, I've got my main levels where I want them,
Alk 8.0
Calcium 440
Mag 1290
Ph 8
Temp 78.4
Nitrates 10
Phos 0.08
Now I have taken my doser off line and gone back to kalkwasser in my ato at a level of
1/2 tsp per gallon as per when I started to have good growth. Just to see if this can help or not as i can't think of anything else to try plus I have everything to hand so no more expense for a while. If it doesn't work I don't know what I'll try next? so for now I'll keep up with updates on it and post back on here if there are any noticable change.

This pic is from tonight for a comparison shot for later down the road I hope it goes well.
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In this hobby things don't always go well and I thought I'd share the issues I'm having.

If you've read all this, thanks for taking the time.
Wow you just discribed the exact same issues my tank has been having. Cyano first, cleared it up same way, then sps started to die off or look really bad, now I have either diatoms or dinos.
 
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Nicholas Dushynsky

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Wow you just discribed the exact same issues my tank has been having. Cyano first, cleared it up same way, then sps started to die off or look really bad, now I have either diatoms or dinos.
Probably dino, what are your nitrates and phosphates. I have been dosing phosphates every day ( A diy solution, that is cheap.) A 1ml dose should raise 100l up 0.07, with that u would think I should have a reading on my test kit (salifert) but it is less than 0.01 before I dose the next day. So the corals are sucking up. I know the kit works as 1 of my other tanks (7 gallon) that I don't have trouble with, has nitrates of 5-10 and phosphates of about 0.03.
20190826_194138.jpg
 

DesertReefT4r

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Probably dino, what are your nitrates and phosphates. I have been dosing phosphates every day ( A diy solution, that is cheap.) A 1ml dose should raise 100l up 0.07, with that u would think I should have a reading on my test kit (salifert) but it is less than 0.01 before I dose the next day. So the corals are sucking up. I know the kit works as 1 of my other tanks (7 gallon) that I don't have trouble with, has nitrates of 5-10 and phosphates of about 0.03.
20190826_194138.jpg
No3 is a little low right now at 1-2ppm, I try to keep it at 5ppm but my tank uses a lot of no3 for some reason. I feed pretty well and dose Neo Nitro when needed. Po4 is 0.03ppm right now and stays around 0.07-0.03ppm. Hanna checker is used for po4, Red Sea Pro and API for no3. Yeah I agree that I may have dinos. I should be getting the microscope I ordered in the next few weeks so I can get an ID.
Question on the lights. Are they able to daisy chain and do they have 1 or 2 power cords?
 
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Nicholas Dushynsky

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No3 is a little low right now at 1-2ppm, I try to keep it at 5ppm but my tank uses a lot of no3 for some reason. I feed pretty well and dose Neo Nitro when needed. Po4 is 0.03ppm right now and stays around 0.07-0.03ppm. Hanna checker is used for po4, Red Sea Pro and API for no3. Yeah I agree that I may have dinos. I should be getting the microscope I ordered in the next few weeks so I can get an ID.
Question on the lights. Are they able to daisy chain and do they have 1 or 2 power cords?
They have 1 power cord and no on daisy chain.
 

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I recommend to upgrade the led boards to the SB reef boards for more true UV spectrum I made a swap about 6 months ago and I wish I did it sooner. Way better growth

also if you are interested in linking your black box to your Neptune system apex you should see my thread athttps://forum.neptunesystems.com/showthread.php?27454-VDM-dimming-on-Viparspectra-black-box-lights
 
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Nicholas Dushynsky

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I recommend to upgrade the led boards to the SB reef boards for more true UV spectrum I made a swap about 6 months ago and I wish I did it sooner. Way better growth

also if you are interested in linking your black box to your Neptune system apex you should see my thread athttps://forum.neptunesystems.com/showthread.php?27454-VDM-dimming-on-Viparspectra-black-box-lights
Have you got photos of your tank please.i was looking at changing some of the leds out but I just never have. How much were the sb reef light boards? If you dont mind me asking that is.
 

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