AI Hydra Settings Thread

[Orcus Varuna]

Hey guys sorry for taking so long to respond. I have been without internet due to irma for over a week. I just got it back and will get through everyone's questions over the next few days. Happy Reefing!


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[Orcus Varuna]

Hey,



Just wondering if this is still the profile you are running? It looks like it isn't available on 1drive anymore.



Thanks in advance

I have many variations at this point I am currently using. On my display supplemented by t5ho a more standard flat profile. On my display frag tank a higher power flat profile for continuity. Finally the high power respiration peak profile on my smaller anemone tank. All of the profiles have been updated and can be found at the following link. https://1drv.ms/f/s!Akco_cmvvLNrgZdidaM1bosnUqv21g


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[Orcus Varuna]

Hey Orcus Varuna, love the work your doing to recreate natural reef environments!



I have a AI Prime HD and have just started your AB+ low power setting with a 50% 3 month acclimation. Was running a similar straight line profile at 50% B/RB/UV/V and 12% CW/G/R



I have a 14G cube with a 14 inch water level and Prime HD mounted 10 inch awl

Tank is mostly Soft/LPS with a couple SPS



Any recommendations would be awesome

Thanks in advance!

Alex.

Mostly lps and a tank that shallow the low power is a great starting point. Acclimate to it very slowly and if you see signs that its too strong switch to my t5ho flat profile.


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[tonyreef]

AwwNuts
I have the hydra 26hds and the MyAi app on my iPhone The profile is the same but the display is a little different I only have the profile on one page and the power usage on another like the one shown on 4793 page 192, just the profile. I'm guessing the tablet shows them both like on 4791 same page.

 

[bushnell]

I have 2 Hydras and 2 Hydra 52s on my 250G I'm running the old control and see no reason to upgrade to the newer one you all use. Can anyone share their settings if using the old controllor please?

 

[Adam G]

Hey guys. Nice to see this thread still alive after several years. I was an early adopter of AI's. Started with SOL blues 6 years ago. Converted to Hydra 52's some years back with the kits from AI and have been happy with them ever since.

I am having some issues with my tank and am revisiting my lighting schedule and intensities to rule out the possibility that they are lighting related. Read the last 10 pages or so of this thread last night and I am realizing that I may be way off on my lighting now that I am seeing what all you guys are currently doing with your lights. Hoping to bounce off of you experienced folks what I am doing and see what you all think.

Let me start by describing my system and my lighting schedule and intensity.

Current Tank: Red Sea Reefer 525xl (5ft long by 22" high by 22.5" wide)

Lights: 4 AI Hydra 52's non HD mounted on rail system so 8" above water line.

Light Control: Apex AWM Control Module.

Schedule: 11am Sunrise, 12pm 25% intensity at 20k color mix, 5pm 35% intensity at 20k color mix, 10pm 25% at 20k, then sunset ramp to 0% at 11pm. So 12 hours total light. First hour ramp up to 25% for sunrise then increase intensity to 35% over the next 5 hours and ramp it down to 25% last half of the day with a 1 hour sunset.

Corals: SPS- Acros, Milli's, Montis, etc. LPS- Lobos, Favias , Euphyllias, Acans, etc. Just a nice mix of colorful LPS and SPS.

I have been experiencing some coral loss over the summer. Receding of LPS, some slow tissue loss on some of the SPS. Have a lot of corals thriving but have lost a few colonies as well. I have been working hard to stabilize ALK and get my N and P back to low levels again and I have really turned the corner with my levels. Have SPS growing again and LPS are looking meatier.

Now for light: I was concerned that with 4 Hydra 52's on a 5ft tank maybe I had too much light. With maxing them out at 35% power and a 20k mix I would think that would be hard to do, but these things are powerful so I was going dial them back.

Then I read through 10 pages of this thread and I see you guys running them at 70, 80, and 100% and now I am wondering if maybe some of my issues are from not enough light?

I am not real computer savvy and would have a hard time downloading and importing profiles. I would like to try and utilize the apex tools and use there pre-canned 6500k, 12k, 14k, 20k and so on mixes if possible. I am cool with adjusting points and adding points so I can certainly change up mixes and times all,day long.

Sooo..... after all that long winded diatribe can any of you gurus offer suggestions. Namely, is 35% peak intensity too low for 4 52's over a 5ft 22" deep tank? Should I slowly ramp up to 50% or 70%? Is a 10 hour cycle with 1 hour ramp Time on either side of it still considered a good way to go or shorter and more intense better. 20k mix is pleasing to my eye and seems in line with what you guys are posting (red, green, and white at a minimum with the focus on the blue light) but am open to suggestions here.

I really want to dial this in and see happy corals as fall approaches. Thanks in advance for advice.

Adam

 

[Papermonkeys]

^^
I'm new to SW so I can't give you much advice on the specific intensities. But downloading and applying AI Hydra profile isn't too bad. I know for me on android, I just downloaded the profile file. and then clicked on it and told the phone to open it with myAI and it saved the profile as a preset.

 

[Adam G]

Oh yeah these things grow SPS.

This purple stag started out as just a frag. Spent the first part of its life under SOL Blues and now is really growing fast under Hydra 52's. Notice the white tips of new growth.



This Tri-Color Acro is about 7" tall by 5" across and is growing really well too:



I have been really impressed with the way everything has colored up and how much the growth rate has increased on all my SPS. Obvious growth on all tips colonies and polyp extension too. The SOL Blues did the job too but everything was so blue. I am really digging the full spectrum. Seeing all kinds of colors in my chalices and acros that I didn't even know were there. I am at 60% max on my main colors with red and green at 40% and UV at 30% and that seems to be a good mix for my tank. 10" above the water with great spread.

Was just reading through the thread from a while back and came across a post I made a few months into having my 52's on my 150g at my old house. Looks like I had them cranked much higher back in the day.

 

[Papermonkeys]

Awesome! thanks for the reply Orcus Varuna. I've had the lower power one loaded and am about to start adding in some corals hopefully everything goes alright.

 

[Kinetic]

I started running Orcas' AB+ on my Hydra 52 HD (over a 24" x 20" x 20" tank) about 10" off the water line.

The lights are SUPER blue. I'm wondering if I can tone down the blues and bring the whites up a bit. Any thoughts on doing this for room aesthetics and how detrimental it will be for corals?

I'm still cycling so nothing in it yet. Planning on anemones and SPS.

 

[rishma]

I started running Orcas' AB+ on my Hydra 52 HD (over a 24" x 20" x 20" tank) about 10" off the water line.

The lights are SUPER blue. I'm wondering if I can tone down the blues and bring the whites up a bit. Any thoughts on doing this for room aesthetics and how detrimental it will be for corals?

I'm still cycling so nothing in it yet. Planning on anemones and SPS.

I run my white green and red way higher than most because I like a daylight spectrum for viewing. I don't like my tank blue. Just go slow with the white

 

[Orcus Varuna]

I started running Orcas' AB+ on my Hydra 52 HD (over a 24" x 20" x 20" tank) about 10" off the water line.

The lights are SUPER blue. I'm wondering if I can tone down the blues and bring the whites up a bit. Any thoughts on doing this for room aesthetics and how detrimental it will be for corals?

I'm still cycling so nothing in it yet. Planning on anemones and SPS.

I really don't reccomend it. I spent months frying a few hundred $ of acros in the process trying to push the white channels north of 25 on an acro dominant tank. The cree xp cool white diodes are ROUGH on sps, especially acropora. Once I started keeping white around 20-25 and blue around 80-90 sps really started to take off and I havnt looked back since. In my anemone tank though I run a much whiter schedule with a peak white of 35 just fine.


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[Kinetic]

I run my white green and red way higher than most because I like a daylight spectrum for viewing. I don't like my tank blue. Just go slow with the white

Do you mean go slow in order to acclimate? Makes sense, though I forgot to mention my tank is cycling and has zero living things in it (other than, hopefully, bacteria eating my ammonium chloride doses), so I'm just going to crank that up.

I really don't reccomend it. I spent months frying a few hundred $ of acros in the process trying to push the white channels north of 25 on an acro dominant tank. The cree xp cool white diodes are ROUGH on sps, especially acropora. Once I started keeping white around 20-25 and blue around 80-90 sps really started to take off and I havnt looked back since. In my anemone tank though I run a much whiter schedule with a peak white of 35 just fine.

That's really interesting. I'll probably have to make some compromises then.

 

[Orcus Varuna]

Do you mean go slow in order to acclimate? Makes sense, though I forgot to mention my tank is cycling and has zero living things in it (other than, hopefully, bacteria eating my ammonium chloride doses), so I'm just going to crank that up.







That's really interesting. I'll probably have to make some compromises then.

If you want acropora then yes, compromises have to be made. There is a reason why the SPS AB+ profile is used by legions of Radion users and some of the best known coral farms such as World Wide Corals. It just plain works but has the downside in that its NOT the most visually pleasing schedule. That's why I added two T5HO (1 Geismann Tropic 6500k and 1 ATI Coral+) supplemental lights to the 52hd. It allowed me to set the LED's at the "ugly" AB+ ratios and warm up the look of the tank to an approximate 12k look with out jacking the Cool White diodes and frying the corals.


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[Kinetic]

If you want acropora then yes, compromises have to be made. There is a reason why the SPS AB+ profile is used by legions of Radion users and some of the best known coral farms such as World Wide Corals. It just plain works but has the downside in that its NOT the most visually pleasing schedule. That's why I added two T5HO (1 Geismann Tropic 6500k and 1 ATI Coral+) supplemental lights to the 52hd. It allowed me to set the LED's at the "ugly" AB+ ratios and warm up the look of the tank to an approximate 12k look with out jacking the Cool White diodes and frying the corals.

Thank you for the insight! I've been a long time halide/t5 user, and so much to learn about L.E.D.'s.

I'll probably only be keeping an anemone or two to start. Maybe I'll just not keep SPS to keep the tank looking a little less blue

 

[Kinetic]

What's the easiest way to edit the SPS AB+ profile? I want to add a bit more white to my LED's (I'll be keeping anemones to start, probably no SPS for quite awhile until the anemones stop walking around).

I can probably edit the XML directly, but it is all on one line and super hard to read.

 

[Kinetic]

I ended up just editing it on the myAI app on my iPad and saved the preset.

Since I'm going to be keeping anemones and not SPS (at least not yet), I bumped my cool whites to just 20% below the blues. Aesthetically speaking, it looks much better than the intense blue lights that was in SPS AB+ High with Peaks.

I hope that'll keep the anemones happy. If anyone has anemone specific settings, I'd love to hear them!

 

[rishma]

I ended up just editing it on the myAI app on my iPad and saved the preset.

Since I'm going to be keeping anemones and not SPS (at least not yet), I bumped my cool whites to just 20% below the blues. Aesthetically speaking, it looks much better than the intense blue lights that was in SPS AB+ High with Peaks.

I hope that'll keep the anemones happy. If anyone has anemone specific settings, I'd love to hear them!

If you have all colors at the same %, the color is reasonable. Adjust from there. I increased red,green, and white a little more. Just use the acclimation feature so you don't burn anything. My soft, lips, and anemones seems happy.

 

[bowen1022]

Can someone link me the SPS AB schedule again?


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[Kinetic]

If you have all colors at the same %, the color is reasonable. Adjust from there. I increased red,green, and white a little more. Just use the acclimation feature so you don't burn anything. My soft, lips, and anemones seems happy.

Thanks! I'm also just curious to see if anyone has good data on any optimal settings for anemone specific tanks. Otherwise, I'll just run some basic setups.