More LED acclimation questions.

[Bent]

Apologies for another one of "those" threads, but the searches I've done really aren't answering what I want to know and as my tank cycles I'm trying to answer a couple questions.

1: the acclimation period seems to be generally 1-2 weeks. My plan was to turn both channels down in there maximum time period to be around 30% and start working my way up by 2% every day or so until I get to whatever the maximum is going to be. Which leads me to the question:
How do you know what the max light output for the tank is going to be? Do I keep going until I get 100% output on both channels? I assume the corals will tell me the answer but what should I be looking for?

2: after the initial acclimation period, do I need to re-do this procedure for every new coral? Logic tells me yes, but what impact will lowering the light intensity have for that time period on the current acclimated livestock?

3: should both channels be equal? Should I be focusing more on one color spectrum over another?

I realize these are rudimentary questions, but I couldn't figure anything out definitively from google or the search feature here.

Thank you for your time.

 

[Sapelo]

To be honest, I don't think these are rudimentary questions and I think the reason you've had trouble finding simple answers is because there are not simple answers.
There are lots of types of LEDs on the market so my experience may not be the same as yours in any way.
I can tell you that when I switched from T5s to Ecotech Radions, I promptly burned several coral before I realized how much more power the LEDs were capable of producing.

For me, I finally found a Radion thread here where a number of people, including someone from Ecotech shared their Radion graph.
With that said, I'm also using Reeflink which came with a number of "pre-set" graphs. I played with them, too much at first, and then more slowly until I found something that worked.
I do use them at about 45% of total power and every time I add a new coral I begin a 2 week acclimation period, pulling the power down to 50% of the 45% and then allowing the Radions to increase the power incrementally each day. I cannot say that I notice a major decline of other coral or livestock during this time (I tell myself they are just having two weeks of cloudy weather.)

Right. I feel like I've said a lot and done nothing really to answer your questions other than to tell you that I do not have specific answers. For whatever that's worth!

 

[E46er]

Tagging along as well.
I heard start at roughly 35% and go up 5-10% weekly until basically your corals tell you they are unhappy.
I started at 35% and 4 hours for peak with a sunrise sunset. I'm not sure how long daily to run them once I reach peak power. My MH ran for 7 hours, I'd like to get to like 7-8 hours of peak light with sunrise sunset but I don't know if that will work out.

I've had them a week so I'm going to go up to 45% tonight

 

[homer1475]

I have 4 channels of LED's(colors, blues, UV, and whites), coming from T5's I started out at 30% and slowly moved up, roughly 5% a week. Eventually I started seeing my corals either loosing color or not opening fully, then moved back by 5% until they were fully open and brightly colored.

With an RapidLED Aurora puck in my biocube, I start out in the morning with them ramping up to the max levels for 4 hours, then ramp down till off 8 hours later. My max levels are as follows:

Colors : 40%
Whites : 70%
UV : 60%
Blues : 60%

I don't like to look at a blue tank so I have white's a bit higher then some would.

This seems to be the happy point for my corals(mostly LPS's). When I acclimate new corals to the LED's I start with them on my sandbed usually under an overhang so it gets minimal light. I then a few days later bring it out from under the shelf so it gets full light, then a few days later start moving it up the rock work(from bottom to top usually takes like a week) to where I eventually want it. Sometimes a coral will dictate where it's happy, and it's usually not where you want to put it.

 

[Bent]

this is good information, lets keep it going.

 

[Ron Reefman]

1: the acclimation period seems to be generally 1-2 weeks. My plan was to turn both channels down in there maximum time period to be around 30% and start working my way up by 2% every day or so until I get to whatever the maximum is going to be. Which leads me to the question:
How do you know what the max light output for the tank is going to be? Do I keep going until I get 100% output on both channels? I assume the corals will tell me the answer but what should I be looking for?

Using a PAR meter would be the best way. Get a 200 reading at the sand and you should be pretty good.
Without a PAR meter, I recommend this: Take the 2 channel power settings and add them together. At the start I'd go for a total of 60 to 100. You'll know you reached the high point when a coral near the highest point in the tank (probably an sps) starts to bleach. In my tank that happened at 60 white and 100 blue.

2: after the initial acclimation period, do I need to re-do this procedure for every new coral? Logic tells me yes, but what impact will lowering the light intensity have for that time period on the current acclimated livestock?

I just start them out on the sand or very low rock, or in my frag tank where I can dial back the lights and not mess with the corals in the DT.

3: should both channels be equal? Should I be focusing more on one color spectrum over another?

The zooxanthellae inside the coral polyps want to do photosynthesis and some byproducts feed the coral. The zooxanthellae would really rather have violet and blue spectrum. In my tank I can dial up the white to 50 and it looks sunny yellow white. As I add more and more blue the white just gets cooler and more white white... even at 100% This isn't critical, but your corals will all do better if you can give them more blue. I do long sunrise and sunset, like 4-6 hours each and they get a lot more blue. In fact, in the early evening the sunset drops off a lot of white and keeps much of the blue. So for a couple of hours the tank looks like a 1965 hippy poster under a blacklight. I enjoy the bright colors that the corals fluoresce and that the tank looks so different from midday.

Thank you for your time.