justthewife
New member
Our corals have been growing under LED's all their lives (three years :rolleye1: if I want to call that all their lives :lolspin
with little problems. We have the Ecotech ones right now (two units for a 90 gallon tank). It took us forever to get the right program for it but every tank and coral is different. We have three acros and they are still young. The one purple acro was up high in the tank and it was pink instead of purple. It was getting bleached out and had poor growth. We moved it down to 21 inches above the lights and now it has grown a lot and regained a lot of its color. So we moved the other Acro's down as well. The Valida colored up nicely at the lower level as well and is growing. We also feed our acros ACRO POWER.
This is just my opinion and observation of my own corals, but I feel any coral that is able to adjust to it's environment and gets large enough becomes more sturdy and able to take a beating from a lot of different things that happen in the tank which I think is why you see some people with large corals growing out the top of tanks (they probably started out lower and grew up to there gradually). When they are little, they are struggling to adapt and grow. Plus those people are probably experts and knew exactly what they had and its requirements or did the trial and error successfully :thumbsup: I am certainly not an expert on acro's but my suggestion is to move your acro down to about 18 to 21 inches from your lights and see if there is an improvement in a couple of weeks. You can always move them up again. I would also suggest Acro power or Fuel. I think it depends on what type of Acro you have as well and researching it's light requirements is a good idea. Some require more light than others. On another note: I have some chalices and monti's that are supposed to like lower light and did terrible at lower light and I have them up high now and they are thriving with rich color, so go figure.
Also another opinion I have about some people giving up on LED's is because they try them after using the other types of lights and find them challenging or frustrating in finding the right settings. They want a light that they can put on the tank and just have the corals grow. They don't want to mess with the LED's (programming them) or they may lack technical experience (this is going on from people I have talked to about them wanting to quit and they said they didn't like messing with computers and programs). Some people don't like to read up on them and don't like having to keep adjusting them to find the right curve. Some people I know have just put them on the tank and programmed them to come on at the correct peak intensity light and then blast their corals all day long with that same amount of light and then have them shut off at night (without having them go through a more natural morning to night setting like it would be in nature where it starts out with lower light and gradually increases to higher intensity and then goes back down again) and then they said the LED's fried their corals. We used to have an LED light fixture that was not programmable and we did switch it out for the Ecotech because while it did not fry our corals, the non programmable one was too constant and the corals looked faded. I am not the technical person regarding our LED's on our tank, that is my husbands job (thank goodness or my corals would be fried with those LED's :facepalm: but I do listen and now know more of what goes into it and why).
with little problems. We have the Ecotech ones right now (two units for a 90 gallon tank). It took us forever to get the right program for it but every tank and coral is different. We have three acros and they are still young. The one purple acro was up high in the tank and it was pink instead of purple. It was getting bleached out and had poor growth. We moved it down to 21 inches above the lights and now it has grown a lot and regained a lot of its color. So we moved the other Acro's down as well. The Valida colored up nicely at the lower level as well and is growing. We also feed our acros ACRO POWER. This is just my opinion and observation of my own corals, but I feel any coral that is able to adjust to it's environment and gets large enough becomes more sturdy and able to take a beating from a lot of different things that happen in the tank which I think is why you see some people with large corals growing out the top of tanks (they probably started out lower and grew up to there gradually). When they are little, they are struggling to adapt and grow. Plus those people are probably experts and knew exactly what they had and its requirements or did the trial and error successfully :thumbsup: I am certainly not an expert on acro's but my suggestion is to move your acro down to about 18 to 21 inches from your lights and see if there is an improvement in a couple of weeks. You can always move them up again. I would also suggest Acro power or Fuel. I think it depends on what type of Acro you have as well and researching it's light requirements is a good idea. Some require more light than others. On another note: I have some chalices and monti's that are supposed to like lower light and did terrible at lower light and I have them up high now and they are thriving with rich color, so go figure.
Also another opinion I have about some people giving up on LED's is because they try them after using the other types of lights and find them challenging or frustrating in finding the right settings. They want a light that they can put on the tank and just have the corals grow. They don't want to mess with the LED's (programming them) or they may lack technical experience (this is going on from people I have talked to about them wanting to quit and they said they didn't like messing with computers and programs). Some people don't like to read up on them and don't like having to keep adjusting them to find the right curve. Some people I know have just put them on the tank and programmed them to come on at the correct peak intensity light and then blast their corals all day long with that same amount of light and then have them shut off at night (without having them go through a more natural morning to night setting like it would be in nature where it starts out with lower light and gradually increases to higher intensity and then goes back down again) and then they said the LED's fried their corals. We used to have an LED light fixture that was not programmable and we did switch it out for the Ecotech because while it did not fry our corals, the non programmable one was too constant and the corals looked faded. I am not the technical person regarding our LED's on our tank, that is my husbands job (thank goodness or my corals would be fried with those LED's :facepalm: but I do listen and now know more of what goes into it and why).
