In retrospect it might not be your bulbs, but I wouldn't rule it out. I have met several people now that have been running those bulbs and started experiencing trouble with their montis when those bulbs started to get old.
Those bulbs just don't hold their par well. The first set of ReefLux we bought were 10ks. Both bulbs were exactly the same, purchased at the same time, but one was very yellow and the other was more pink.
I was able to hunt down a picture of how it looked. Same exact bulbs.
So we tried another set of 14k bulbs. These seemed ok, but once we hit like 8 or 9 months old my montis started to brown out a bit. We couldn't figure it out because our nitrates we at 0. No major ph swings or over dosing alkalinity. Temperature was fine too. Also no pests. We did visual inspections and even dipped to be on the safe side. We even scaled back on dosing Zeovit chemicals and reducing the Prodiobio, thinking that maybe our water was too clean. But no improvement in the corals.
At around 10-11 months my montis started having real tissue damage, mild bleaching and patchy tissue loss. Even my acroporas started looking unhappy. It got to the point that I removed my large monti mother colonies and put them in my other tank until we figured out the problem. My caps and encrusting montis were especially effected. We did regular water tests and water changes, everything was coming out fine. But the sps continued to look like they were getting burned or shocked. Corals that had been under the same lighting in the same spot for the whole year were looking worse.
So we came to the conclusion that maybe it was the lights. About three months ago now, we changed over to 400w 20K Radiums. It took about 1.5 months for my corals to make a turnaround and put on new growth. Now they are all doing very well. The colors have come back and they have new tips. I finished moving all the rest of my large montis back the other day and they seem happy.
I have met more people recently that have started to experience problems with their montis that were previously doing great and their tank parameters are fine. Everyone that I've spoken with has had 8+ month old ReefLux bulbs in common. Is this just a coincidence? Somebody that has time on their hands should take some scientific measurements or something and see if there is an issue with this bulb as it ages or if its just a fluke.
