AI Hydra Settings Thread

I have been running 3 hour ramp for a few years now, I felt it got too dark too fast with 1 hour and seemed unnatural, 3 hours was the closest I could get to a real sunset.
 
That makes a good sense. I will slowly adjust my ramp rate also. Thx again bud. Also, ur Violet is at 70%, how is the tank color?
 
Your welcome, Violet is barely noticeable, I can go 70 or 20 and barely notice a difference, tank looks more blue than anything.
 
I have 52's on the ends and a 20 next to a 26 in the center, the 26 is angled at the back wall.

IMG_20150809_150341_edit_1439147288584.jpg


Some close ups,
This one was green forever and has started developing blue tips which look purple in pictures.
IMG_20150809_150128.jpg


Hawkins echinata was completely deep purple and has started getting green again, I think I like it fully purple though...lol
IMG_20150809_145939.jpg


Unknown sps, green polyps with deep purple base and now purple tips showing up.
IMG_20150809_145903.jpg
 
Getting kind of fed up with AI's customer service generic responses to Kelvin settings for my 52's.

I asked for setting info for 10k, 12.5k, 14k, 15k, 17k and 20k, hoping at least for 10k, 14k and 20k to get a baseline for a complete, custom 24 hour timer setting including darkness and moonlighting. Here's what I got in response;

"Thank you for contacting AquaIllumination. We do not have specific color temperatures settings. The reason for this is to allow you to create a custom lighting setup to your specific taste. Personally, I would recommend selecting settings that you find desirable then modifing based on how your corals respond."

I get that they don't have time to custom program my lights for me and everyone else, that's cool, but really? No benchmark 10k, 14k, 20k setting? I love the fact that I can get really crazy custom with these lights, but sometimes I'd really like to just hit a button and say give me 10k for 2 hours, 14k for 3 hours etc. I've been all over the place with my settings and for the most part I'm happy, but my happiness doesn't equal coral happiness, so this is why i'd really like some benchmark kelvin settings.

I've started at AI's settings out of the box, moved to Wazzel's settings and then sonicboom's settings and now I'm onto my own creation, but time will tell if my corals like my settings over any other users.

And yes, I have seen the threads a way back that outlined color temp settings for the AI Prime, but those aren't from AI I don't believe, but I could be wrong. BUT, I of course did record those and have them for reference.
 
R = Red
G = Green
B = Blue
RB - Royal Blue
DB = Dark Blue
V = Violet
UV = Ultra Violet
CW = Cool White
WW = Warm White
NW = ???



Color: R G B RB DB V UV CW WW NW

20K: 37 17 100 100 100 100 100 37 37 37
18K: 45 45 100 100 100 100 100 45 45 45
14K: 75 75 100 100 100 100 100 75 75 75
12K: 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
10K: 100 100 75 75 75 75 75 100 100 100
7K: 100 100 45 45 45 0 0 100 100 100
5K: 100 100 17 17 17 0 0 100 100 100
 
Your welcome, Violet is barely noticeable, I can go 70 or 20 and barely notice a difference, tank looks more blue than anything.

Violet, red, green and UV have almost no impact on their own. Together they make up around 13% of the total par, with all levels set to the same values.

Violet is four 3.5 watt diodes compared to white 16, 20 watt, royal 12, 15 watt and deep 8, 6 watt.
 
Just to show that you can run at high levels if you take your time acclimating to them. This is my tank at 15 months. The first 12 were under 1 unit at around 96% total power, after many months of slowly increasing the power. The last three months have been under two units working their way up to that same level. When I added the second I did a 45% percent reduction and a 4 month ramp. All the corals are from 1" frags.

image-M.jpg


image-M.jpg
 
Just to show that you can run at high levels if you take your time acclimating to them. This is my tank at 15 months. The first 12 were under 1 unit at around 96% total power, after many months of slowly increasing the power. The last three months have been under two units working their way up to that same level. When I added the second I did a 45% percent reduction and a 4 month ramp. All the corals are from 1" frags.

image-M.jpg


image-M.jpg

Your tank is one of the reasons I got into the 52's, plus my LFS guy swears by them. I placed a brain frag up high just moving stuff around and forgot to move it and noticed it started to bleach after 3 days so I'm not worried about the lights not being strong enough. I'm just now getting into Acro frags and I just want to make sure they don't fry while still supporting my abundance of LPS/mushrooms/zoa's on the sand bed.
 
Your tank is one of the reasons I got into the 52's, plus my LFS guy swears by them. I placed a brain frag up high just moving stuff around and forgot to move it and noticed it started to bleach after 3 days so I'm not worried about the lights not being strong enough. I'm just now getting into Acro frags and I just want to make sure they don't fry while still supporting my abundance of LPS/mushrooms/zoa's on the sand bed.

Thanks. If you are not careful you can bleach quickly. Just take you time bringing the levels and all will be good.
 
Guys, I have a question. I am upgrading to 60" x 24" x 24" tank. I now have total of 4x (non-52\26) hydras on hand. The contents of 120g (two hydras @ 80%) will be transferred over to the new tank. What advice can you give me?
E.g can I use just 3 or do I need all 4? The plan is to slowly upgrade them to 52s via AI kit.
 
Guys, I have a question. I am upgrading to 60" x 24" x 24" tank. I now have total of 4x (non-52\26) hydras on hand. The contents of 120g (two hydras @ 80%) will be transferred over to the new tank. What advice can you give me?
E.g can I use just 3 or do I need all 4? The plan is to slowly upgrade them to 52s via AI kit.

If it were me I would start with 3 and see how it goes.
 
Back
Top