Kessil Club

CrayolaViolence said:
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
Click to expand...
Dude you need to acclimate your corals to the light, I have 3 360s on a 60inch tank, there is no way you need to supplement, you need either to start your corals lower and slowly ramp up power or run less intensity for longer hours. My lights are on 14 hours a day.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk
 
Turbosreef said:
Dude you need to acclimate your corals to the light, I have 3 360s on a 60inch tank, there is no way you need to supplement, you need either to start your corals lower and slowly ramp up power or run less intensity for longer hours. My lights are on 14 hours a day.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

I did acclimate the corals. I did the two week acclimation programmed into the controller issued by kessil.
When it reached the "high" end point some of my corals began bleaching and no longer coming out, hence the reason I brought the light back down. When I did that the sps responded well, the leathers still stayed shrunken and withdrawn until I put up the FHO purple. I know I should NOT have to be supplementing. That's what has me so frustrated with the whole thing.

For example, I have been getting some very helpful advice from a member here about my BTE. BTE are light loving creatures who want a lot of intense light. Yet mine is climbing inside caves to avoid the light even when it was as low as 20%.

It makes no sense at all and I'd really like to be able to get some stable use out of these lights considering what I paid for them.
 
If anyone has an video of the difference in shimmer with the major optical diffusion I'd be real interested in seeing that


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I don't think a blanket statement of BTAs all love intense light is quite accurate. From my experience so far with the ones I have kept, some like to be at the top to take in as much as they can....some like very low light and sit at the bottom. Some like to have flow that whips them around and some like very low flow like LPS.

I would say as long as the BTA is inflating and eating periodically, I wouldn't worry.

Also, an 11" deep tank with only 15" between it and the surface...using a 2-Kessil 360s, no wonder you are bleaching them. 20% sounds about right imo


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
jiminy_crime said:
I don't think a blanket statement of BTAs all love intense light is quite accurate. From my experience so far with the ones I have kept, some like to be at the top to take in as much as they can....some like very low light and sit at the bottom. Some like to have flow that whips them around and some like very low flow like LPS.

I would say as long as the BTA is inflating and eating periodically, I wouldn't worry.

Also, an 11" deep tank with only 15" between it and the surface...using a 2-Kessil 360s, no wonder you are bleaching them. 20% sounds about right imo


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...


20% is where I have had my intensity set, right now, and so far had the best results. However, I'm still not getting the color I expect and the tank just seemed very dark. When I added the T5 with the purple light anything purple (like my kenya trees) or pink, expanded exponentially, when it looked barely viable under just the kessil. I'm trying to find a happy medium. The leathers are at the bottom of the tank and at the edge of the range, my SPS are closer to the top no more than 6 inches and doing very well growing nicely. I have a frog spawn that's the size of a football that I swear gets a new head every other week and a duncan that so far I've counted over 23 heads on it and it sprouts a tiny new one every other day it seems. Since I added the t5 the color on everything is substantially better. That has been the biggest problem with the kessils, getting light that they will grow under and show color because I can't seem to get a balance of both.
 
You can probably turn them up but going to have to raise them up further. Took me forever to fine tune mine but mine is 21" deep and 8" above the waterline.

I know I reached out to slief who is an expert with Kessil 360s...maybe he could give you some input. I'm sure he will love me volunteering his help.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I tried 65% color but it really made my tank look too white and seemed to have issues with algae growing on the glass with that much white.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
jiminy_crime said:
You can probably turn them up but going to have to raise them up further. Took me forever to fine tune mine but mine is 21" deep and 8" above the waterline.

I know I reached out to slief who is an expert with Kessil 360s...maybe he could give you some input. I'm sure he will love me volunteering his help.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

My tank is 11 inches deep and the lights are 15 inches above the water. Yes he has been helping with my BTE questions. Very patient and helpful.
 
CrayolaViolence said:
I did acclimate the corals. I did the two week acclimation programmed into the controller issued by kessil.
When it reached the "high" end point some of my corals began bleaching and no longer coming out, hence the reason I brought the light back down. When I did that the sps responded well, the leathers still stayed shrunken and withdrawn until I put up the FHO purple. I know I should NOT have to be supplementing. That's what has me so frustrated with the whole thing.

For example, I have been getting some very helpful advice from a member here about my BTE. BTE are light loving creatures who want a lot of intense light. Yet mine is climbing inside caves to avoid the light even when it was as low as 20%.

It makes no sense at all and I'd really like to be able to get some stable use out of these lights considering what I paid for them.
Click to expand...

A two week acclimation isn't long enough depending on where you started and where you ended up. I suggest no more than an increase of 2% per week and ideally 2% of what you start out at as opposed to increase intensity 2% (on a scale of 0-100%). If you go 1% a week on the 0-100% scale that is safer. When the corals start to respond adversely, back off a couple % and leave it there for a week and then increase a tiny bit more. A little bit once a week. Depending on whether you corals originated under LED's and of course the type of LED's taking a couple months to acclimate and increase intensity is best. Also, as noted, there should be no reason to supplement your lighting other than if you want to see other colors in your corals. What many don't realize is that some of these colors we see in people's reef tanks aren't the colors these corals would appear in the ocean where the red spectrum is filtered out by the water at very shallow depths. These pink and or red colored corals in people's tanks are often brought out by the red and or other color LED's that come in other lights. Corals get most of their needed photosynthetic radiation from 400-460nm light spectrum which is where the Kessils are strongest. That spectrum however doesn't make all colors in corals "pop".

Also, at 15" above the waters surface, at 40% intesinity, you aren't producing nearly as much readable PAR as you may think. Granted, the Kessils don't read well under PAR meters to begin with since PAR meters typically don't read the 400-460nm range well. This happens to be the bluer range which even for our eyes is hard to judge intensity. Apogee has recently released a new PAR meter that is better designed to read the above ranges but I hvaen't played with that meter anyway.
 
Slief...so for those that don't have an apex controller and may have a spectral controller, is 5% increases at a time too much? The spectral controller only does increments of 5% increases and decreases.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
jiminy_crime said:
Slief...so for those that don't have an apex controller and may have a spectral controller, is 5% increases at a time too much? The spectral controller only does increments of 5% increases and decreases.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

I generally suggest less but if you go 5%, then do that once a month or twice a month at most. The key is taking it slow enough that if you encounter adverse response from corals, you can quickly go back and not do damage to the corals.
 
I had taken some par readings under my new 160, using apogees new LED sensor. I use my 160 to fill in a shadow caused by a huge colony on too. The 160 does hot provide much par at all. It's enough for what I need it for. At max intensity pushed to about 70% white it's only 150 par at about 12" below the water and about 16" directly below the light.
 
MHG said:
I had taken some par readings under my new 160, using apogees new LED sensor. I use my 160 to fill in a shadow caused by a huge colony on too. The 160 does hot provide much par at all. It's enough for what I need it for. At max intensity pushed to about 70% white it's only 150 par at about 12" below the water and about 16" directly below the light.
Click to expand...

PAR readings are pretty much meaningless with the Kessil 360's. I've said it before and will say it again, the standard Apogee as well as most other PAR meters don't read 400-460nm well for the same reasons the blue spectrum doesn't register as very bright to the human eye. The blue spectrum is very hard to read BUT that is the most important spectrum for corals. 420-460nm is where corals get most of their needed photosynthetic radiation from. This is where the whole PUR vs PAR subject comes into play. It's not necessarily how much light you have but more importantly how much of the right spectrum. In the case of the 360WE's, they provide the right spectrum for corals and more intensity than a PAR meter let alone your eyes will lead you to believe. Apogee has a new PAR meter than reads that spectrum much better and gives a much better reading of the actual PAR but most people don't have that meter.

At the end of the day, if you slowly increase your intensity over the course of months, you corals will tell you how well they like the light based on growth. If you bump it 25% over the course of 30 days, you're likely to end up with unhappy corals that bleach out on you. Even bumping it 10% at one time can be too much in my experience. The slower you increase the intensity, the better the corals will respond in the short and long term, the less likely you are to damage them and the easier it is to reverse course if you go too far.
 
slief said:
PAR readings are pretty much meaningless with the Kessil 360's. I've said it before and will say it again, the standard Apogee as well as most other PAR meters don't read 400-460nm well for the same reasons the blue spectrum doesn't register as very bright to the human eye. The blue spectrum is very hard to read BUT that is the most important spectrum for corals. 420-460nm is where corals get most of their needed photosynthetic radiation from. This is where the whole PUR vs PAR subject comes into play. It's not necessarily how much light you have but more importantly how much of the right spectrum. In the case of the 360WE's, they provide the right spectrum for corals and more intensity than a PAR meter let alone your eyes will lead you to believe. Apogee has a new PAR meter than reads that spectrum much better and gives a much better reading of the actual PAR but most people don't have that meter.

At the end of the day, if you slowly increase your intensity over the course of months, you corals will tell you how well they like the light based on growth. If you bump it 25% over the course of 30 days, you're likely to end up with unhappy corals that bleach out on you. Even bumping it 10% at one time can be too much in my experience. The slower you increase the intensity, the better the corals will respond in the short and long term, the less likely you are to damage them and the easier it is to reverse course if you go too far.
Click to expand...



When increasing intensity, how do you know when to stop? Do you basically find a point that stresses the corals and drop a few percentage points below that point?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

C.Eymann
SPS and kessil only lightning
Replies
1
Views
737
griss
griss
t0mmy108
Kessil light options for a Waterbox Marine X 90.3
Replies
2
Views
763
BuckeyeFish
BuckeyeFish
jay505
Is STARS still an active club
Replies
3
Views
875
griss
griss
W
ATO multiple water jugs
Replies
4
Views
626
WMCWINGS186
W
A
New, but Not New to the Hobby
Replies
17
Views
3K
Guygettnby
Guygettnby
Back
Top