Kessil question: I have two 360we and I have not been able to get the settings where my corals are all equally happy. If I go above 20% intensity it burns them (my tank is about 11 inches deep) and my lights sit 15 inches off the water. My tank is a 48x24. Many of my leathers were not expanding properly and I was losing a lot of shrooms for a while. I called kessil and after two weeks of merry go round finally a technician called and we talked. I have tried all his suggestions and finally just gave up and added a purple t-5 light. HOLY COW what a difference it made. My corals exploded. Now I'm not sure why this is. I mean the kessil is bluer than blue so I know the corals are getting enough blue light, and everyone says pink is for aesthetic reasons and doesn't really do anything but before I added the purple (a pink and blue combo) my kenya trees would not extend and my green leather flower stayed shriveled. Even my Elegance has grown 2x it's original size since adding the additional light.
The thing is, I feel like for what I paid for these lights, I should not have to be supplementing them with anything. I was told I wouldn't need to. Whiter light doesn't help, the corals don't like it, and bluer all the colors fade into the background and the tank looks over shadowed. Also I'm using less than 50% of the lights intensity because anything more and my corals bleach. I managed to bleach out a pink aussie gonipora in less than 3 days when I dare to up the intensity by 5%. I thought the coral was dead and tossed it in my rock bin, which has a T5 light over it and now the polyps are coming back.
I'm really at my wits end on this. So many people seem happy with their kessils and their corals are doing well, but mine don't seem to be responding the same. I will say I have seen an increase in growth on my sps corals, but my leathers, zoes etc, don't seem impressed at all. I even have a bubble tip anemone hiding in a cave because it doesn't like the lights.
My max color, right now, is 45% my max strength is 25%. Lights go off at 8 pm come on at 6 am but don't start ramping up until about 8 am.
The technician with kessil said he prefers to not use a control and to just set the lights at a particular amount and leave it, turning them on in the morning and off in the evening. I haven't done this but I am seriously considering it since nothing else has worked so far.
I will be putting the kessils over the new tank in the next couple of weeks. It's a 180 and 24 inches deep. I'm hoping I will see a change for the better with a greater space for there to be different areas of light and dark. Although I don't see how I could possibly have them too high at this point.
Anyhow, I am open to suggestions if anyone out there has any. Thanks
