How long does it take to burn an SPS under LED?

Kurkis493

New member
This is a general question because I have no experienced it, yet.

So if the intensity of your LED is far to high and the coral burns because of it, how long does this take?

A couple days of lightning? Instantly?

Do you see any forewarnings?

How long under the LEDs before you can take a breath and know they won't burn?

I assume this is pretty fast and not something that takes weeks to accomplish.
 
I think it's as soon as you see the tips bleach.i don't know how long that takes. I have seen a whole tank bleach wi then a day from the non dim able reefbreeders led light. Was not preety
 
So we are talking a couple of days at best ya?

I would imagine that I need to watch the coralites to see if they are out and if nothing were to start to bleach our in a couple of days the corals are alright with the lightning...

I moved some new corals up higher in the tank to move room for some other stuff, it wasn't 30 days under the LEDs but I moved my LEDs up another 3-4 inches in an attempt to compensate.

I sit next to my tank 12 hours a day so I am trying to find out if there are any "first signs".
 
Not a couple of days in my experience. Took my blue assuie stag about three weeks before it started to bleach out. Since I lowered the intensity to 80% everything looks better then ever.
Don't under estimate LEDs they are powerful
 
I added 3 Kessil 350's over my tank and they didn't seem as bright as mh so I put them on 100% every thing started bleaching by the end of the next day
 
This really depends on the coral, the intensity of the lights, and the lighting prior to using the LEDs, Im betting under the right circumstances, you could see drastic changes within 24 hours. Although this would probably be rare.
 
It depends on the fixture and type of bulbs. It won't take long if you throw too much garbage spectrum at them. It could be as fast as a day. Keep in mind, this is not "too much light," rather "too much of the wrong light."
 
I use a fellow member's Radion Pro profile. He has been running the Radions for a couple of years now and his tanks success does all the talking.

I did the "acclimation" process when I added my Radion to the tank.

I moved the light up and it is 12-14" off the waterline and the corals in question here are about 5" or better below the waterline.

I read these horror stories of people losing everything to LEDs and I wasn't sure the process time. Seems like if you are gonna have a total meltdown it will happen almost immediately.

I will monitor the couple of pieces for the next few weeks and move something a little lower if I start to see any problems.
 
with my dimmable reefbreeders I started really low (15%) and upped it by 5% every week. I noticed bleaching several weeks later at around 70%, so I backed it off to max blues at 60 and whites at 40%. Now everything is stabilizing in my tank and the color is returning.
 
LED bleaching often takes much longer to show up than color loss from over saturation from other light sources. You may also see a color loss even following some other type of stress to corals that were fine under LEDs until the stress event. I have had LEDS now for just over a year. I have some interesting observations regarding their affect on corals. They do work but I find it much more challenging to manage my reef under LEDs as compared to Halides or some other wider spectrum light source.
 
I just recently dropped my ed light in the tank, Gideon light, it was not dimmable.. With that light I had no troubles ever, with the switch to deep blue dx leds, they are bright, I had to start my light 24" over the tank and reduced hours, I am just now down to 12" and 8 hours, quality of leds make a huge dif. Also, prior lighting, I originally had a mh before my first led fixture, so high intensity and leds switch came easy, but the deep blues are extremely intense, my blastos Omost died in 2 days
 
I switched to ecoxotic marine panoramas recently and they burned a few of my acropora that I had towards the top of the tank. Granted I have 3 fixtures running at 100% in my 75g shallow which was not smart. I previously had 650W of MH over top so I figured 150W of LED would be nothing. Boy was I wrong. Thankfully the fixtures have dimmers on both the white and blue LEDs. I have turned the whites down to 40% and left the blues at 80 - 100. Hopefully the damage to the acros stabilizes soon. I plan on ramping up the power output 5% every week until I find the sweet spot.
 
Went from an 8 x 54 Watt ATI sunpower to 3 x AI sols... almost disaster.. now at 100% with all lights and life is returning.
different led's for different things.. one can over-estimate LED's as well
 
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