Euphyllia long term success with LEDs

MellowReefer

New member
I've been having trouble getting past the 1-2 year mark with frogspawns, hammers, and torches, which are my favorite corals. Someone told me maybe it's because I have the low-end LEDs (only white and blue). Anyone here with long term success with the better LEDs? I'm looking at Maxspect Razor or AI Hydra lights.
 
i'm not sure how long you would consider long, but i've had my euphyllia under AI Vegas for well over a year now, and they're growing like gangbusters.

the green torch in this picture started out with one head, smaller than a dime, growing on the stalk of my frogspawn. it was shaded and never really did much, until about 6 months ago when i moved it to get better light. now, fully inflated, it is 4 - 5" long and about the size of a baseball. 3 heads currently.

here is it right when i first moved it:

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this is it about two weeks ago:

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this hammer started out about a year ago as a quarter sized frag. this is it in january:

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it had blown up in size. it has easily doubled since then in size and number of heads.

i will say that when i had my EcoRay lights, which were only white and blue, my euphyllia suffered. i even lost a head on my big frogspawn you see in those pictures. since switching to the Vegas, it has been night and day difference though.
 
I have Fathomled Hydras for well over a year and I have hammer, frogspawn, torch and bubble and it is all doing great. Growing, multiplying and colorful.
 
My only question for you would be are you sure it's the lights? Or is it possible they may be starving due to lack of getting nutrients other than what they gain from photosynthesis? Just throwing it out there, I couldn't tell you one way or another about the lights you have but mine are thriving in a higher nutrient system with LEDs, about to hit the one year mark in a month or two.
 
My only question for you would be are you sure it's the lights? Or is it possible they may be starving due to lack of getting nutrients other than what they gain from photosynthesis? Just throwing it out there, I couldn't tell you one way or another about the lights you have but mine are thriving in a higher nutrient system with LEDs, about to hit the one year mark in a month or two.

Which LEDs do you have?

I had a local expert come over (professional who takes care of tanks) and he tested my water and evaluated my setup. He said that everything was good but he's seen LPS decline in tanks with LEDs unless they are the high end LEDs. He recommended if I didn't want to spend a lot of $ on better LEDs that I add some T5 next to my LEDs, so I did, but now it looks weird because I have shimmer only on the back half of the tank, so I'm thinking of upgrading to the higher end LEDs instead.

I have 11 fish in my tank and I feed them well so I think I have plenty of nutrients in the water. My duncans grow like crazy, mushrooms and zoas do pretty well, and I also have one tiny SPS (birdsnest) that's growing really fast.
 
I propagate hammers, frogspawn and torch commercially under LED no worries at all.

I have all these that have been in one tank under our first gen spectrum of only white and blue LED cheap Chinese Bsled fittings since 2010. Been going strong always taking regular cuttings from these and see little difference to our other lighting under fuller LED spectrum's.

I have under gone about ten generations of 'new spectrum' in our LED coral farm, this has made huge inroads with growth and colours of our others species we do. But the old white and blue still do just as good a job on the euphyllia species for both colours and growth.

The greens really do pop under the 50% 450nm and 50% 10k whites.
 
I have an AI Hydra & all my euphyllias look good. I got growth on my torch after a week in the tank.

The torch started looking quite sad & I thought maybe it was too much light & turned things down but it turned out to be low Alk. Once I got that straightened out it was all good again. I also have 3 hammers & a frogspawn, everything is showing good growth under the Leds & before I turned down the lighting nothing was over 55%.
 
I had a hammer in my 14g cube for 2 years under panorama pro LEDs, not exactly high end but they worked great. Had to frag it every 6 months or so right in half to keep it from overgrowing the tank, all my friends have frags of it! It is now in my larger tank under reefbreeder LEDs and still growing well.
 
I have an AI Hydra & all my euphyllias look good. I got growth on my torch after a week in the tank.

The torch started looking quite sad & I thought maybe it was too much light & turned things down but it turned out to be low Alk. Once I got that straightened out it was all good again. I also have 3 hammers & a frogspawn, everything is showing good growth under the Leds & before I turned down the lighting nothing was over 55%.

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?
 
I had a hammer in my 14g cube for 2 years under panorama pro LEDs, not exactly high end but they worked great. Had to frag it every 6 months or so right in half to keep it from overgrowing the tank, all my friends have frags of it! It is now in my larger tank under reefbreeder LEDs and still growing well.

I have the panorama pro LEDs (still do but now T5 also). Only thing I can think of is that I didn't have enough of them. Or something else is wrong in my tank :(
 
Which LEDs do you have?

I had a local expert come over (professional who takes care of tanks) and he tested my water and evaluated my setup. He said that everything was good but he's seen LPS decline in tanks with LEDs unless they are the high end LEDs. He recommended if I didn't want to spend a lot of $ on better LEDs that I add some T5 next to my LEDs, so I did, but now it looks weird because I have shimmer only on the back half of the tank, so I'm thinking of upgrading to the higher end LEDs instead.

I have 11 fish in my tank and I feed them well so I think I have plenty of nutrients in the water. My duncans grow like crazy, mushrooms and zoas do pretty well, and I also have one tiny SPS (birdsnest) that's growing really fast.

i have a reef breeders photon 48 over the tank. I was just taking a stab in the dark since i didn't know your livestock and feeding habits.
 
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.
 
I can never get my euphyllia to grow... at best they just stay the same size or slowly shrink.... I've kept them under radions and t5s.... I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing wrong, but I'm pretty sure it isn't the lighting. Maybe water flow or maybe something in my water chemistry. *shrug*
 
I can never get my euphyllia to grow... at best they just stay the same size or slowly shrink.... I've kept them under radions and t5s.... I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing wrong, but I'm pretty sure it isn't the lighting. Maybe water flow or maybe something in my water chemistry. *shrug*

I kept euphyllias under a 36W pc in a 12g cube & got growth but they are really blossoming under the Hydra. I feed quite heavy & soak in Selcon, that might be worth a try or we can work out a euphyllia grow out exchange problem. The only LPS I won't try again is a wall hammer, it looked gorgeous for about the first 10/11 months & slowly withered away 2/3 months later. Broke my heart for what I paid for an orange hammer!
 
I've had good luck with the torches and hammers under my (first sols) and now my hydras. over 1.5yrs with them:

image_zps275494c4.jpg
 
I've had good luck with the torches and hammers under my (first sols) and now my hydras. over 1.5yrs with them:

image_zps275494c4.jpg

Your torches look awesome and I am so jealous. 1.5 years is pretty good proof that they do well under LEDs. Anyone else with an even longer time of success under LEDs?
 
maxspect all the way for me:)

That looks like a nice fixture, it's all in one and more reasonably priced than AI. What types of coral do you have - frogspawn, torch, hammer? How long have you had them under the maxspect? A picture is worth a thousand words :)
 
literally just switched to the hydra last night over my 29g. been runnin t5s over my tank w/ great success until half the lights decided to quit (not sure if the ballast went out or what) but everything kept flourishing. 8 months ago my Euphyllia frogspawn had 2 heads, it now has 5!!

we'll see how it does under the hydra - read some horror stories of coral acclimation lately and I'm suddenly very hesitant/anxious/nervous about the switch . . . fingers crossed & sendin up some prayers!
 
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