Dummyforclownfi
New member
Hey all. So as some of you who have followed my build thread know that I recently upgraded to LEDs about two months ago. All in all I am impressed with the build quality of the unit and the ease of customization. I enjoy the color spectrum it provides as well as the shimmer.
I have, however, not been able to perfect my settings on the unit. One good thing I did with the unit was start the lights on a very low intensity. I avoided bleaching any of my coral. I have been having an issue with some of my sps. I would like to avoid the topic of LEDs being able to/not being able to grow sps. I have seen too many successful build threads to accept as fact that they won't grow sps. Now that that's out the window let me begin with my LED experience so far.
Day 1 I set a custom lighting schedule very similar to the recommended one from reef breeders themselves on their website. I did tune down the settings a little bit. Unlike what others have done and increased intensity by 10% every week, I kept mine steady for 4 weeks. I ran the blues at 30% max and whites at 25% max with a natural daylight cycle that included the ramping up and down of the lights. Then I doubled the blues on every 30 minute setting. I waited 3 weeks and did the same to the whites. I avoided bleaching anything. As far as lighting goes, I think I have done alright with the acclimation process. In fact I believe I wasnt providing enough light at first. Well slowly but surely my sps frags started going downhill. Not all of them and not all at once but I would say half of them did actually start going downhill. They started to STN. I am baffled as to what is going on to cause this. My parameters are in line and I have had Jonathan test as well to get a second opinion. I did have the calcium fluctuate a tad bit during a period of about two weeks. It wasn't much and I had to dose some calcium but then I got them back in line and went back to dosing kalk. Yet my frags still, one by one, started to STN. It is interesting to note that my tricolor valida is doing awesome while a simple monti cap got STN. I also have 3 different species of birds nest and two of them look amazing while one of the colonies completely took a nose dive. There are a few factors that I think might be playing a role here. First I did have a Kenya tree and Xenia get into it and possibly release some toxins. The Xenia just about died but has since then recovered. I took this opportunity to get rid of the Kenya tree. The very next day any sps close by did have STN. My green cap was one that was affected, at least I believe they were affected. The cap is not fully healed but it is still growing so I am assuming that it will make it. I did have a northern lights acro on the opposite end of the tank who also got STN the next day and has since died. But the frags in the middle of the tank seem unharmed. So that is why I have doubts as to if it was chemical warfare or not. I have since then changed out my carbon. Second factor was a flame angel that started to eat the polyps on the sps. He was confirmed to not eat coral but when I introduced some new sps into the tank, he went crazy. The flame angel is gone. The third factor was my flame hawkfish was constantly perched on top of them. Usually not a big deal but since these guys were already struggling the hawkfish was just stressing them out more. Hawkish is gone. I corrected the issues but I have yet to see the coral color up nicely and even just yesterday a red planet acro started to STN after a month of healthy living in the tank. I Dont know what is causing my sps to start to STN on me. I would like to believe it was one of the above factors but I still have some starting to diminish out of nowhere.
This leads me to believe that lighting might be an issue. I started thinking: the good thing about LEDs is that you can emulate the sunrise and sunset through the day down to 30 minute intervals. After all, isn't the best thing to do is emulate the corals natural environment? Well then I realized that it would take more than just changing light intensity every 30 minutes to accurately mimic the sun. I also thought about the success of MH and T5 and the fact that you don't have control over the intensity of the lights or the ability to have them change spectrums throughout the day. You can set a timer to have them come on and then have them go off at a certain time of the day and that is it. So I asked myself, "could this controllability we are given with LEDs be the reason so many people have failed in keeping sps?" Have these manufacturers put too much control in our hands? Are the coral every going to acclimate if we change the spectrum every 30 minutes? I don't have an answer for that. But seeing the success of other lighting units (T5 and MH) that give you essentially only the ability to turn the unit on or off, I have decided to redo my lighting schedule in hopes of better results. I will give my aquarium an hour of 20% blue (420nm & 470nm) lights in order to emulate a sun rise and an hour at the end with the same intensity with 9 hours of constant, non-fluctuating light at a certain intensity between the sunrise/set. I will probably go with 50% whites and 60% blues since that is what I peak at anyways. I am hoping that this consistent lighting schedule can help things start to look better and stop the STN.
What are your fellow reefers thoughts on this? Do any of you keep sps successfully with LEDs set on a ramping up/down schedule? Do you guys believe there is an underlying issue I have yet to discover or do you guys believe the havoc is a combination of all the listed factors above? Do any of you think its solely the lights not being tuned correctly? I do feel that even though the unit supposedly provides a "full spectrum" coverage for the coral, I dont believe they are getting it. The lights are too direct and even with having removed the 90 degree optics, I am concerned the colors still are not blending as they should and in turn, not all coral are getting the red that they need. I am open to any advice you guys might have.
Also I am checking phosphates with a Hanna checker and always get a reading of 0.0. I do go heavy on GFO. Could I be going too aggressive on the GFO?
Lastly I would like to apologize for any major grammar errors above. I typed this all on an old cell phone that lags significantly while typing, making you spell crazy sentences. I am not proof reading this before I post. Thanks all
I have, however, not been able to perfect my settings on the unit. One good thing I did with the unit was start the lights on a very low intensity. I avoided bleaching any of my coral. I have been having an issue with some of my sps. I would like to avoid the topic of LEDs being able to/not being able to grow sps. I have seen too many successful build threads to accept as fact that they won't grow sps. Now that that's out the window let me begin with my LED experience so far.
Day 1 I set a custom lighting schedule very similar to the recommended one from reef breeders themselves on their website. I did tune down the settings a little bit. Unlike what others have done and increased intensity by 10% every week, I kept mine steady for 4 weeks. I ran the blues at 30% max and whites at 25% max with a natural daylight cycle that included the ramping up and down of the lights. Then I doubled the blues on every 30 minute setting. I waited 3 weeks and did the same to the whites. I avoided bleaching anything. As far as lighting goes, I think I have done alright with the acclimation process. In fact I believe I wasnt providing enough light at first. Well slowly but surely my sps frags started going downhill. Not all of them and not all at once but I would say half of them did actually start going downhill. They started to STN. I am baffled as to what is going on to cause this. My parameters are in line and I have had Jonathan test as well to get a second opinion. I did have the calcium fluctuate a tad bit during a period of about two weeks. It wasn't much and I had to dose some calcium but then I got them back in line and went back to dosing kalk. Yet my frags still, one by one, started to STN. It is interesting to note that my tricolor valida is doing awesome while a simple monti cap got STN. I also have 3 different species of birds nest and two of them look amazing while one of the colonies completely took a nose dive. There are a few factors that I think might be playing a role here. First I did have a Kenya tree and Xenia get into it and possibly release some toxins. The Xenia just about died but has since then recovered. I took this opportunity to get rid of the Kenya tree. The very next day any sps close by did have STN. My green cap was one that was affected, at least I believe they were affected. The cap is not fully healed but it is still growing so I am assuming that it will make it. I did have a northern lights acro on the opposite end of the tank who also got STN the next day and has since died. But the frags in the middle of the tank seem unharmed. So that is why I have doubts as to if it was chemical warfare or not. I have since then changed out my carbon. Second factor was a flame angel that started to eat the polyps on the sps. He was confirmed to not eat coral but when I introduced some new sps into the tank, he went crazy. The flame angel is gone. The third factor was my flame hawkfish was constantly perched on top of them. Usually not a big deal but since these guys were already struggling the hawkfish was just stressing them out more. Hawkish is gone. I corrected the issues but I have yet to see the coral color up nicely and even just yesterday a red planet acro started to STN after a month of healthy living in the tank. I Dont know what is causing my sps to start to STN on me. I would like to believe it was one of the above factors but I still have some starting to diminish out of nowhere.
This leads me to believe that lighting might be an issue. I started thinking: the good thing about LEDs is that you can emulate the sunrise and sunset through the day down to 30 minute intervals. After all, isn't the best thing to do is emulate the corals natural environment? Well then I realized that it would take more than just changing light intensity every 30 minutes to accurately mimic the sun. I also thought about the success of MH and T5 and the fact that you don't have control over the intensity of the lights or the ability to have them change spectrums throughout the day. You can set a timer to have them come on and then have them go off at a certain time of the day and that is it. So I asked myself, "could this controllability we are given with LEDs be the reason so many people have failed in keeping sps?" Have these manufacturers put too much control in our hands? Are the coral every going to acclimate if we change the spectrum every 30 minutes? I don't have an answer for that. But seeing the success of other lighting units (T5 and MH) that give you essentially only the ability to turn the unit on or off, I have decided to redo my lighting schedule in hopes of better results. I will give my aquarium an hour of 20% blue (420nm & 470nm) lights in order to emulate a sun rise and an hour at the end with the same intensity with 9 hours of constant, non-fluctuating light at a certain intensity between the sunrise/set. I will probably go with 50% whites and 60% blues since that is what I peak at anyways. I am hoping that this consistent lighting schedule can help things start to look better and stop the STN.
What are your fellow reefers thoughts on this? Do any of you keep sps successfully with LEDs set on a ramping up/down schedule? Do you guys believe there is an underlying issue I have yet to discover or do you guys believe the havoc is a combination of all the listed factors above? Do any of you think its solely the lights not being tuned correctly? I do feel that even though the unit supposedly provides a "full spectrum" coverage for the coral, I dont believe they are getting it. The lights are too direct and even with having removed the 90 degree optics, I am concerned the colors still are not blending as they should and in turn, not all coral are getting the red that they need. I am open to any advice you guys might have.
Also I am checking phosphates with a Hanna checker and always get a reading of 0.0. I do go heavy on GFO. Could I be going too aggressive on the GFO?
Lastly I would like to apologize for any major grammar errors above. I typed this all on an old cell phone that lags significantly while typing, making you spell crazy sentences. I am not proof reading this before I post. Thanks all
