Light acclimating Acro?

[Palting]

Posted at the new to the hobby, but only had a few hits, so I'm trying again.

I have a bright color Fiji Acropora sitting on my substrate about 24" from the water level until I figure out what to do with it. It is a main piece that the LFS took frags from, and he has put those frags on a shelf just under the water line, as high as he can towards his PC lights. He said I can put my piece immediately up on top of my aquascape, about 9" below the water line under a 150W MH. But, not too sure since I've heard on this forum that you are supposed to light acclimate this thing.

So, what should I do? Slowly move it up over several weeks, or go ahead and put it on the roof of the penthouse?

 

[Toddrtrex]

As I posted in your other thread,

I personally do things differently -- I put it where I want it to be long term, and just use layers of window screening b/t the tank and the lights. Most of the time I use 3 layers with removing a layer every 5-7 days.

 

[Palting]

Thanks, Todd. I must have just missed your post by minutes.

 

[James404]

That coral looks pretty bleached, I would move it up and just keep an eye on it. None of my SPS I have light acclimated and have had no issues, I just watch them closely and if they dont like where they are, they get moved to more or less light.

 

[Palting]

One branch, the one closest to the camera, does seem bleached to me, too. But doesn't bleaching mean it got burned by too much light?

 

[greenbean36191]

The whole thing looks bleached, though sometimes that's just an artifact of using the flash on pictures. Bleaching is usually due to a combination of high lighting, high temperature, and/or low water flow. It's almost always a bad idea to move a bleached coral into higher lighting.

While you acclimatize corals to new lighting you should generally keep them in flow that's higher and light that's no stronger than what they came from. Slowly move them up to the desired lighting level over the course of 2-3 weeks.

Todd's method is also a great way to do it, but I generally only use it when I'm acclimatizing the entire tank to new lighting rather than a single coral.

 

[Palting]

Thanks, greenbean. I've been staring at the thing for a while now. I don't think it's really bleached. Bleached would be white like the color of stump where the frag was taken.

Anyhoo, I just found a passage in Eric Borneman's book that says that prolonging the low-light acclimating for light demanding coral may lead to bad things, so I'll slowly move this thing starting tomorrow and plan on hitting it's spot within a week.

James, I don't think I have the guts to just put it up there and observe. I may not know what to look for to tell me they don't like it.