Anyone growing Anemones under L.E.D.?

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ctlegacy

New member
I spent a great deal of money to "upgrade" my lighting from 250w MH to A.I. Hydra LED's... I had them for about 1.5 years. My anemones never grew. Over time they started to shrink.

In effort to save the anemones, I supplemented the tank with 4 t5 bulbs. Helped almost instantly. Everything appeared healthy again, but anemones still weren't growing. Oh, these aren't small anemones either. Some of them were 14"+ when I switched to LED. When I added the t5's the biggest was probably 10"...

2 weeks ago, I added another 250w MH with a 14K bulb. Today, the anemones look the best they've looked in years.... I think I'm even seeing growth again.

So about $1800 later, I'm right back at 250w Metal Halides..... Damn....

Did I do something wrong? Aren't LED's supposed to be the best? Any thoughts or insight by someone with great anemones under LED would be great.
 
How did you start the AI? They may not have acclimated well if you started them at 100%. I have a Kessil A360 over my 60 cube and my anemone is growing just fine. Not sure the depth you have in your tank but mine being 24" i am getting good growth from my LTA at sand level.
 
I started mine at 50%. which even that was too high. Bleached my corals out. I lowered the LED's to 20% and did the whole acclimation thing. Got them up to 80% over 6 weeks. Corals bleached out again, and anemones never did anything.
 
Every tank and every anemone is different. My LTA went from 7 or so inches to over 9" in diameter under AI Sol Blues for the last couple of years. I really don't want it to grow any bigger. This anemone seems to grow or shrink depending on how much food it catches. I don't feed it anymore. Haven't fed it for years. The clown fish sometimes shove food into it and sometimes it catches something drifting by.

LED lighting works for my anemone. I am surprised that adding T5's would help at all. And, who said LED's are the best. They work once you figure out how to optimize them for your tank. MH are easier to get to work well.
 
I don't think you can just switch over like that. You should keep both on at the same time, and slowly decrease the MH while increasing the led. Im talking like a span of a month. I have an rbta and he's growing EXTREMELY fast under my reef radiance leds. My cousins is double the size of mine under AI hydras.

And by acclimation, I dont mean just have the leds on and increase their intensity slowly. No. Keep both lights on the tank, and slowly lessen the mh. Its a totally different light source. The animals need just as much acclimation from source to source as they do intensity. That's my experience.
 
I grew several 'nems out under PC lighting. I made up for a lack of light with plenty of food and they were happy as could be.
 
I had my H Mag under ai sol blues for about a year.The anemone thrived but didn't show any increase in size.All my sps look good on top but white underneath.So I have gone back to the mhs.
 
Neither all LEDs are the same, nor are all anemone's.
I don't see your species listed.
PAR value on most LEDs drop dramatically at depth, and at 30" that could be an issue for sand dwellars.
 
Did you feed your anemones? Also what type of anemones?

I have 3 species of anemones in my tank and all of them are growing and looking great under LEDs. I also feed them about once a week.
 
There is a HUGE difference between MH and LED. In the following pics, I use LED on my nems. They have a flesh color to them, light brown, in photo's they appear bleached worse than they are in real life. Never really get dark dark, like they do under MH. They grow when fed, not so much from LED. Under MH, I think they grow a bit more. Just what I've seen.

This guy is directly under DIY 18" plate with 60 cree LED's, the old school XRE Q5 whites, and cree XRE royal blues (reefledlights.com), before or right at the time the "bin 316" designation came out (I think those are old school now too).

It's got some brown color to it, but not as dark as it could be with MH.

I also don't really feed them, I don't really want them any bigger.



If you'r looking to "grow" your anemone larger, food works.


Now, the next two photo's, both these anemone's were bought a couple months ago, at the same store, at the same time, cipro'd at the same time in the same tank. After treatment, they were put in different systems. The blue one is under LED. The purple (my friend Pete's) one is under MH400 watt. HUGE difference. The blue has a light tint of flesh color to it, the purple is DARK.




There is a HUGE difference between MH and LED when it comes to coloring up an anemone. Which one is healthier? IMO, they are both healthy. I guess it would be the difference between a guy that races cars, and a guy that likes to collect them and take it out for a thrill ride once in a while. The one's sole intent is to be in first place, the other is simply to enjoy. Both have fast cars. Anyways, here's a couple more of my friend Peter's gigs. This guy we call "goliath", it's big, and has the longest tents I've ever seen on a gig... maybe 4+ inches long? IT's rediculous how long they are.





THe two pics above are with 400 watt MH. Again, a HUGE difference in the brown zoo algae coloration. If I was starting out, I would definately go with 400 watt MH for the higher light anemone's, like the gigs I have pics above.
 
Thanks for giving me an update David, decided to say hey and appreciate your pics so I can see how they are, worried about my green one. As you can see they color up better in MH, their photosynthesis tissues have picked together with their fullness and coloration, goliath have grown a few inches since the intro of MH.
 
I have a 29 gallon Oceanic Bio Cube with a LED retro kit from Rapid LED. Tank is going on it's 4th year. I picked up a RBT which was about the size of a golf ball. It has since split and when the two of them fully expand there isn't much room left in the tank. If I had to do it over I probably wouldn't put one in a tank this size again.

About 2 weeks ago I came home to a tank full of milk. I can't explain what it was other than what I believe was the two bubble tips spawning. There isn't anything else in the tank of that size that could turn the tank white. I left it alone for a week and it recovered on its own. Did a water change and off we go again...go figure.

Anyway picked up a 40 breeder from Petco today and will probably pick up another tomorrow for a sump. This has to tide me over until I can order something larger down the road.
 
I have 6 quadricolor in my 60 cube under a single G2 Radion pro running on the "Radiant Color" preset slightly tweaked for moon phase and peaking at 60% over an 11hr photo period. The fixture is about 10" over the surface.

I have not had any issue keeping and growing them with this setup which by the way is less than 6 months old. They grow crazy fast but I do feed them small pieces of krill about every 3 days and they catch quite a bit from regular feedings as well.

I have two (colorado sunburst and a rainbow) that came from 400w 20k Radium MH tanks. These two did take the longest time to acclimate and hid in the rocks for about 5 weeks before emerging. They have been the slowest growers so far. I have noticed some color shift as well but in my opinion it has definitely been for the better. For example I have found that the sunburst that came from MH was much more of a deep burnt orange with dark yellow tips and and a very dark forest green base. It has shifted to a much brighter florescent orange with lighter yellow tips and the green base has become more of an iridescent green.

I am not nem expert and have only ever kept qaudricolor BTAs but my experience is MH yields deeper richer color while a a quality LED with a well tuned spectrum will yield brighter more florescent and iridescent colors. Perhaps this is just a color rendering thing I dont know.

Here are some pictures for growth reference I wish I had more. The first sunburst was about 2" across when I got it and is now about 9" when fully inflated. Please excuse some of these pics there were all taken with an iphone 5 and the color representation of some is not 100% accurate

3 weeks after setup up of the tank. As you can see from the bit of hair algae I was still finishing cycle.







I'm guessing this is about 2-3 weeks later



Rose added about 2-3 weeks after the first Sunburst it was about 5-6" across when I got it.







This picture came another 2-3 weeks later.



I will continue in a couple more posts. too many pics...
 
Notice the the growth of the Sunburst







Lemon drop added at about 3 months.





This was about 1 months ago. The lemon drop has obviously moved.



Starting to fill in to the point I cant really tell how big each one is.



 
Lemon drop now about 14-16" across





Lemon Drop slpit about 10 days ago. This was the day following the split. each split is already about 9-10" across at this point.



Lemon drop is starting to display the iridescent color shift I spoke about. I bought this nem at a show and am not sure what kind of lighting it came from.

 
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