Acropora: MH/T5HO to LED Acclimation?

Walking_Target

New member
So, I got a very nice piece of (for now...) blue branching acropora sitting at my LFS waiting for me to bring it home on friday.

The tank it's currently acclimated to is a ~110g. 4' long by 2' wide and about 18" deep, This tank is lit by a 400w MH at aprox 14k and a 4 bulb T5HO system for actinic and some white suplimentation. (18k-22k output)

My personal tank is a Biocube 14, lighting is by 12 Cree XR-E LEDs, 6 Q5 cool whites and 6 Royal Blues, each on their own dimmer.

Given the high level of PAR that LEDs throw out in comparison to other lighting schemes, it has been suggested that I start out with the LEDs running at aprox 25% and work it up by 3%-5% per day over the course of ~10 days, up to my nominal operating level at 70% of total LED output.


Does anybody else here have experience acclimating corals to LEDs from T5HO/MH?
 
I have a 90w led fixture I purchased from a company in Hong Kong. I bought it a few months ago and wanted to test out its power so I purchased a Bali Tricolor and Rainbow Monti to see if the light was good enough to support sps corals. The corals were coming from a tank with a 250w mh fixture. The corals turned white for a bit (polyps were always out) but colored back up nicely. The Rainbow Monti has spread quite a bit, however the Tricolor has barely started to spread. After they colored up I went and purchased a Tenuis and a Millepora. Both coming from a tank with 2 250w mh fixtures. The Milli I put on the very edge of the rock in my tank and the Tenuis went right in the middle. Well the Tenuis completely turned white. I tried to lower it at that point but it never came back. The Milli is doing fine where it is. I have a pavona that turned white and I wasn't sure if it was going to make it but it slowly came back as well. I also burned a Meteor Shower and had to lower an acan and micromusa frag because they were closing. Since being lowered to the sand they have come back fully. My lights are only on for 4hrs because I keep putting new frags in there and don't want to kill anything else with the lights. I also purchased a 120w led fixture from the same company and tried putting that over my tank. That REALLY washed everything out and I decided that was just way too much light for my little tank and took it down and put the old one back on it. It was only on for maybe 2-3 weeks but everything started to turn white pretty quickly. I would definitely start with 25% and work your way up. I wish mine had dimming capabilities.
 
You can than Orbitech v. PFO for the non-dimming fixtures out there. I had to build mine from the ground up.

Yeah, LEDs are no joke though, I almost lost a pair of hairy mushrooms when I first used this fixture.
 
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