acropora help

Light settings depend on model, iododes wattage, height, lenses and many other factors.

Example: My lights are set at max 90% b/rb/uv and -30% of that on the whites. 15" of the water, 90 degree lenses on b/rb/uv and 120 degree on whites.
Lightning a 72X36X36 area.
 
sounds a bit like light stress? what kind of light do you have over it? i had the same isue when i ran my leds with to much power.
 
My lights are from LEDZEAL. I have 2 5ft units and no greens or reds. Just whites, blues, royal blues and uv's
 
They are the evergrow IT260 proreef which have been modified some of the white diodes have replaced with more blues and uv.
51 diodes 2 green and 2 reds, whites are set at 80% max and blues at 100 % light is 7" off water. Lighting an area 24"x28".
What do you guys think?
 
Well its been 2 weeks since my last post.
I have had the red LED's covered up for two weeks now.
I have added another jebao wp 25 in place of my tunze nano stream which needed replacing,I now have 2 of them creating loads of random flow.
My light settings are blue and white 100 % for 5 hours and two 14,000k t5 tubes for 7 hours.
Trying to emulate my old metal halide settings/less ramping up and down.
Any comments gladly welcomed.

Thanks justin
 
No discussion here of possible acro pests like red bugs or flatworms..
Have you had a very close look at the corals for pests?
Recession and recovery.. That's a tricky one..
Do you test for potassium?
Maybe high temp fluctuations?
I really don't know but interested to see if the red diode reduction does anything..
 
Definitely not pests, temp very stable,triton test everything spot on.
Unfortunately I don't have any pictures I accidentally wiped all photos off my phone last week!!!
Just imagine typical stn from the base.
I wonder if it is the fault of the leds? lots of people have given up on them for one reason or another.
why have they given up got to be one of two reasons lack of growth or lack of colour ultimately.
just don't want to give up on leds. I am supplemting with T5's now so hopefully things will improve?
 
I'm a mh user to the core, but I'll say no reason to give up on LEDS since they're proven to work. Learning curve is a little steeper and it's easier to fry the tank, but there are too many success stories to indicate otherwise
 
Just skimmed through thread. Did you post about how high your unit was above your tank? I'm an all LED user and I think you are cooking your corals if your optics are on and you ran the whites at 100 percent. But it depends on how high you have them. I have a similar led unit and at 60 percent whites, some sps species get very faded. Polyp extension is there but it doesn't make for a healthy coral. My height was roughly 10 inches above water at the time so you can get an idea.
 
The unit is 7" above the water it's a custom made jobby a lot of the whites are swapped out for blues.
When I calculated watts per metre squared I have less than half the watts I used to run when I was using Mh.
Par levels are 350 at the top of the rock work at 100 % whites and 100 % blues.
Corals have never looked faded in fact colour is pretty good.
 
You should take pictures. Sometimes what might look okay color wise. Is too washed out. If you're is 6 inches above. I'm almost positive you are sun tanning your corals. I'm not a firm believer in PAR readings when it comes to LEDs. It should be only used as a guide and not complete basis of what your corals can handle.
 
I moved all my acro's down to the middle of my tank. I too had them up high because everyone said they love bright lights and everyone told me they can't get too much light. I use LED lights. Since I moved them down, they are doing much better.
 
What I don't understand is there are loads of people with multiple led units covering the whole surface area of tanks and you can see sps corals filling the tank and grow right up to the surface.
I only have one unit it's foot print only covers half the surface area, par readings although not the be all and end all must be a guide.
We must start to lay down some guidelines for correct led use based on results from successful aquarist using different units.
I'm sure light is the issue I've had the lights right up at 13" high and no improvement.
I think constantly changing the lights many settings is the problem.
Never had these issues with MH just turn on and grow corals.
Thanks for everybody's comments.
 
Have you tried running some carbon to see if theres any toxins in the tank? maybe your softies and monties are hardy corals. from what your experiencing it shouldnt be the fixture. mostly sps either STN or bleach out or brown out if its not enough or to much lighting. another thought is try running the polyx filter and see if you see any metal in the tank. just a thought. are you running GFO? i know you test your water, have you tried different LFS with salifert test kits or hanna checkers ?
 
Hi

Triton test came back with very good results no acumillation of metals.
I run some carbon passively but do not change regular enough.
I haven't ran gfo for over a year now I have deep sand bed and algae in refugum.
I do have a lot of purple mushrooms growing all over the lower rock work,don't know if they can release some toxins??
Thanks for your suggestions keep them coming,I really appreciate other people's experiences.

Cheers
 
What you mentioned is true. Lots of LED users have multiple fixtures. I think that's where a lot of people have the mixup. People are under the impression that LEDs can be utilized like MH. The concept of lighting with LEDs is different. You must focus on spread and balanced intensity. That's why I stated that you can't go strictly by PAR. I would consider getting another fixture so you have side to side coverage of LEDs. Think about it this way. If you lit up your tank with t5s. Would you buy a 24" bulb to cover a 36" tank? LEDs are focal lights. So you have to have multiple sources of light so the spread is even on all sides of the coral. That's how you have even growth and healthy growth. But that's for down the road. Your main issue is still too much intensity. When close to the surface of water, your light won't spread much, so what might look visually dim to you, can still be super intense for the coral. Your best bet is to just raise lights up and start your White channel on about 50 percent. Let the corals adjust to that. And if you need more light, slowly ramp up maybe a few percent each day or every several days.
 
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