Thanks for sharing. How low was your alk and what do you have it at now that they are doing better?
Do you mean you had your Hydra lights at only 55% or they are at 55% now?
Since the torch looked so sad & I hadn't tested Alk in a while I decided to, not thinking Alk was low I kept throwing in drops of the reagent, Alk was below 6. I added buffer & the next morning it tested at 8 & the torch looked much better so I added buffer to the ato water & now I'm at about 10 for Alk.
Prior to finding the Alk was low my Hydra settings were at:
CH 48, V 53, DR 20, G 20, DB 58, RY 58, & UV 48.
My current settings are below:
CH 37, V 31, DR 14, G 14, DB 47, RY 47, & UV 31
I'm trying to gradually get my settings back up & tweaking a few things after reading the Hydra settings thread in the lighting & equipment forum. Red & Green will only grow more algae so I'm going to work them down to 10. Violet & UV should be the same so I will only up them to 35 or 40 depending on how things look. I don't think I'm going to set the White higher than 40 or 45. Eventually I'd like to get the blues to 65 or 70.
I'm slowly increasing the lights by 1 every few days to avoid frying anything. Lights are 14" above the water line & I only have a single Hydra in the middle of the tank. Lower light corals like a button, candy cane, & a goniopora are in the corners of the tank & they look great. I actually started increasing the lighting slightly last week because my acan & the button were looking a little po'd from the decrease in lighting.