OneReef's 120g DreamReef
- Thread starter OneReef
- Start date
OneReef
Reef Guru
OneReef
Reef Guru
I have come to a couple of conclusions last night. I was doing some reading on blue LEDs, including the following quotes:
*****I'm a reefer and also a scientist working in the lighting field and love your preso slides. I've been pulling together similar data to try and understand how to best use my new LED lighting.
I read a lot of posts by folks who seem to be bleaching their corals with very blue lighting. Your slides illustrate the problem……photons around the 450 nm wavelnegth range are very energetic; however, the eye's sensitivity to 450 nm color is not all that great, especially bright blue light. I've attached the curve for human photopic repsponse to illustrate the point.
So folks probably turn up their blue LEDs to a perceived brightness level similar to other broad wavelength sources such as metal halide or fluorescents never realizing the huge amount of optical watts that the corals are being bombarded with in the 400-450 nm range.***
I cranked my blues up awhile back, and I do have some corals that have lightened up in color. So, I have two possibilities, both of which I am changing. One, I am going to dial back my blue intensities some. Two, and I addressed this a few posts ago, but I am starting to feed more. I am concerned with growth and color, both seeming to be affected by my very low nutrient levels. With the additional lighting I have increased, the coral needed increased feeding to be able to utilize the energy created by the extra light. In essence, they are probably starving. Even though they are growing, it is much slower than I feel it should be. Also, lighter colors on some coral lead me to believe the same.
Last night, I decided to try something different than OysterFeast. I shut my overflow off and added 1/4 tablespoon of Coral Frenzy reef food about an hour after lights out. I have never seen my coral come to life like they did at that point. SPS had very full polyp extension, scolys were wide open, and my chalices all opened up and had long sweepers coming out of every eye. I never saw that kind of response with just OysterFeast.
I don't want to get too high of levels of bad nutrients, so I am going to limit the Coral Frenzy to 2-3 times a week, but I definitely am going to add it into my regimen unless I start seeing bad results I.e. cyano, diatom, algae.
I had tested my phosphates on the Hanna digital a couple of days ago, and it came back results of .02. That's very low. I am hardly ever scraping green off the glass. That's a good thing but too low of nutrients and my coral starve. I like it being .02, but I need to compensate with more feeding.
I originally felt like I was feeding enough: amino acids daily, and OyserFeast once or twice a day. You would think that would be enough, but due to my good skimmer, changing my filter sock regularly, timely water changes, and biopellets, it is keeping my nutrients in check, if not too good. Based on the coral response to the Coral Frenzy last night, my phosphate reading, some corals lighting up in color, and slower growth than should be occurring, my two changes as I stated earlier are:
1) increased or more varied type of coral feeding
2)decrease blue light intensity
I'll post results from these changes soon.
*****I'm a reefer and also a scientist working in the lighting field and love your preso slides. I've been pulling together similar data to try and understand how to best use my new LED lighting.
I read a lot of posts by folks who seem to be bleaching their corals with very blue lighting. Your slides illustrate the problem……photons around the 450 nm wavelnegth range are very energetic; however, the eye's sensitivity to 450 nm color is not all that great, especially bright blue light. I've attached the curve for human photopic repsponse to illustrate the point.
So folks probably turn up their blue LEDs to a perceived brightness level similar to other broad wavelength sources such as metal halide or fluorescents never realizing the huge amount of optical watts that the corals are being bombarded with in the 400-450 nm range.***
I cranked my blues up awhile back, and I do have some corals that have lightened up in color. So, I have two possibilities, both of which I am changing. One, I am going to dial back my blue intensities some. Two, and I addressed this a few posts ago, but I am starting to feed more. I am concerned with growth and color, both seeming to be affected by my very low nutrient levels. With the additional lighting I have increased, the coral needed increased feeding to be able to utilize the energy created by the extra light. In essence, they are probably starving. Even though they are growing, it is much slower than I feel it should be. Also, lighter colors on some coral lead me to believe the same.
Last night, I decided to try something different than OysterFeast. I shut my overflow off and added 1/4 tablespoon of Coral Frenzy reef food about an hour after lights out. I have never seen my coral come to life like they did at that point. SPS had very full polyp extension, scolys were wide open, and my chalices all opened up and had long sweepers coming out of every eye. I never saw that kind of response with just OysterFeast.
I don't want to get too high of levels of bad nutrients, so I am going to limit the Coral Frenzy to 2-3 times a week, but I definitely am going to add it into my regimen unless I start seeing bad results I.e. cyano, diatom, algae.
I had tested my phosphates on the Hanna digital a couple of days ago, and it came back results of .02. That's very low. I am hardly ever scraping green off the glass. That's a good thing but too low of nutrients and my coral starve. I like it being .02, but I need to compensate with more feeding.
I originally felt like I was feeding enough: amino acids daily, and OyserFeast once or twice a day. You would think that would be enough, but due to my good skimmer, changing my filter sock regularly, timely water changes, and biopellets, it is keeping my nutrients in check, if not too good. Based on the coral response to the Coral Frenzy last night, my phosphate reading, some corals lighting up in color, and slower growth than should be occurring, my two changes as I stated earlier are:
1) increased or more varied type of coral feeding
2)decrease blue light intensity
I'll post results from these changes soon.
OneReef
Reef Guru
I recently got rid of most of my zoas. I have a few left that were grown onto rocks that I couldn't remove, but I have few left. They never grew well in my tank. I think between the super clean water for my SPS, and high lighting, the zoas simply don't do well. There's certainly no danger of them taking over....
Acropolooza
New member
how's the coral doing?
OneReef
Reef Guru
I had it custom made by a LFS. Yes, I had it made taller, due to me wanting it to be more at eye level and not having people having to bend over to look into the tank. It worked out quite well I think.
SNAKEMANVET
PREMIUM MEMBER
Hey Jay,Your tank looks great.
coonasssaint
New member
Really nice build! Very clean.
OneReef
Reef Guru
I ran them at higher intensity for awhile (80-90%), but things started to lose a little color, as I think they were getting too much light. I backed it all down and over the last couple of months, everything looks really great and has good color.
Here is my current lighting schedule, not sure how I came up with these, just tweaking here and there and it ended up like this for the time being:
Time------White/Blue/Royal-----%
9am---0/5/0
10am---40/45/45
11am---60/58/56
3pm---67/70/70
3:50pm---72/70/70
4pm---53/55/52
6pm---45/50/50
8pm---8/20/15
10pm---0/5/5
10:30pm---0/1/0
1am---0/0/0
