CrayolaViolence
New member
I have two tuna Blue 360 lights over an 80 gallon with mixed corals. I got the kessils after having disastrous results with metal halide to the cheaper chinese lights. Learned too late with the chinese lights that they were actually putting out way more light than they appeared to be and since there was little to no communication with the sellers (serious language barriers) it wasn't until I'd sent them back that this was figured out with the help of another reef person who went through the same thing.
Anyhow…I decided to make my life easer (insert sarcastic laugh here) and just put out the money for kessil lighting. I did look at several brands of light but chose kessil because reviews of light output showed very little variation in light output based on depth. Basically, the light distributed more evenly.
I have seen a vast improvement in my corals and growth since the kessils. I've had to do some serious tweaking because my tank is shallow and the kessil recommendations for height won't work for mine because it's too much light, but after some time of the phone with a technician (and btw, getting help from kessil is not fun. You'd think they'd have WAY better customer support, but they really don't seem to want to deal with customers and want you to go to your LFS and have them tell you what to do). Anyhow…there is just one issue I have with the lighting, which while I love the blue, I also have grown to hate it. Why? Because unless the coral is green or yellow, it turns brown. Anything pink, purple, or whatever color, is muted to a dull brown color that is neither pleasing or very easy to see. Some of my corals have simply disappeared into the rock due to the blue of the light.
So now I am left wondering if I should turn up the color, making it more white. While this improves things, it doesn't bring out the pinks. For example. I got a beautiful pink leather tree the other day. I mean it glowed pink. Brought it home and now I have a brown puff ball. Not attractive at all. I'm unsure what to do at this point of if there is anything I can do to get the color of the corals to show more natural under the kessil light?
Another thing, when talking to the kessil technician, he wasn't all that in favor of ramping the lights up and down. He preferred just turning them on, then turning them off. All I ever hear is how important it is for the lights to be on a "schedule" yet he actually said there wasn't much use in it. I asked him about par measurements (A few days ago I as looking to borrow a par meter) and he told me due to the design of kessil lights par readings would not be an accurate representation of how much light is actually doing anything, since you really needed (with the kessil) a way to measure pur not par.
Anyhow…back to the pinks. Is my only solution adding an HOF light over my tank with pink in order to get those colors to show? or is there some setting I'm missing on the kessil. Right now I have the intensity set low, because my tank is shallow, and the lights go from 5% blue to 90% white max and back down to the end of the day. Max output for intensity is 40% due to how shallow my tank is (about 10-11 inches deep).
Anyhow…I decided to make my life easer (insert sarcastic laugh here) and just put out the money for kessil lighting. I did look at several brands of light but chose kessil because reviews of light output showed very little variation in light output based on depth. Basically, the light distributed more evenly.
I have seen a vast improvement in my corals and growth since the kessils. I've had to do some serious tweaking because my tank is shallow and the kessil recommendations for height won't work for mine because it's too much light, but after some time of the phone with a technician (and btw, getting help from kessil is not fun. You'd think they'd have WAY better customer support, but they really don't seem to want to deal with customers and want you to go to your LFS and have them tell you what to do). Anyhow…there is just one issue I have with the lighting, which while I love the blue, I also have grown to hate it. Why? Because unless the coral is green or yellow, it turns brown. Anything pink, purple, or whatever color, is muted to a dull brown color that is neither pleasing or very easy to see. Some of my corals have simply disappeared into the rock due to the blue of the light.
So now I am left wondering if I should turn up the color, making it more white. While this improves things, it doesn't bring out the pinks. For example. I got a beautiful pink leather tree the other day. I mean it glowed pink. Brought it home and now I have a brown puff ball. Not attractive at all. I'm unsure what to do at this point of if there is anything I can do to get the color of the corals to show more natural under the kessil light?
Another thing, when talking to the kessil technician, he wasn't all that in favor of ramping the lights up and down. He preferred just turning them on, then turning them off. All I ever hear is how important it is for the lights to be on a "schedule" yet he actually said there wasn't much use in it. I asked him about par measurements (A few days ago I as looking to borrow a par meter) and he told me due to the design of kessil lights par readings would not be an accurate representation of how much light is actually doing anything, since you really needed (with the kessil) a way to measure pur not par.
Anyhow…back to the pinks. Is my only solution adding an HOF light over my tank with pink in order to get those colors to show? or is there some setting I'm missing on the kessil. Right now I have the intensity set low, because my tank is shallow, and the lights go from 5% blue to 90% white max and back down to the end of the day. Max output for intensity is 40% due to how shallow my tank is (about 10-11 inches deep).
