Halide Lighting Problems and Questions

GrimReefer82

Roll Tide!!!
OK a friend of mine has a 125 gallon tank with 3 24" odyssea HQI fixtures and 6 65W actinics (1140W) total. It has the original 250W odyssea 15K bulbs. One problem is every SPS coral we put into the tank is completely bleached within a week unless it is under an overhang. My thought is that the UV radiation from the lesser bulbs and UV sheild could be a factor. The tank is only 20" tall and the lights are about 13" off of the water. The soft corals and frogspawn are all doing fine and the water quality is prestine. Could the spectrum also be wrong? Could it be the corals we tried? Maybe the cheap glass under the bulb isn't treated to block UV, can this be fixed? Are there other bulbs that emit less UV? Any way to convert the fixtures to 150W without buying all new ballasts?

I have all of the same corals under T5's in my tank and they are doing great. I am a little confused because I thought softies would die from too much light faster than SPS.

This is more frustrating to me than him because I built the entire system for him. Of course I tried to talk him into different lighting but it wasn't my choice or money.
 
It depends on what kind of light they were under previously. If they were under 150 and now 250 it could be too much. Also, is it possible his parameters are off?

If there was a UV issue, then even the softies would bleach and die.
 
Completely Impossible for parameters to be off. I have checked everything over and over again. The softies are happy and all of the fish and inverts are great. Mag, Cal and Alk all are perfect.

The corals were under 250W 12k mogul base halides and were doing fine in a really dirty water with about 20 ppm nitrate. Now they are under 250 15k HQI in clean water with no nitrates. I tried to acclimate the SPS by slowly moving them out from under an overhang over the course of about 5 days and haven't even got to the point where I can move them up in the tank.
 
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