Questions About Lighting my Tank

[reret10]

Hey Guys,
So I haven't posted for a while because I've been pretty busy and luckily, nothing really been going wrong specifically but I've been seeing some issues. I spent a lot of time looking up how to properly light up my 30 gallon high mixed reef and about 18 months ago, I decided on getting the ocean revive arctic 247 LED light which seems to be working pretty well but I feel like there's a chance I'm Not running it to it's full potential. For the last year basically, I've been running the whites at around 40% and the blues at about the same. Overall, I generally find that a lot of corals I buy initially have a drop in color vibrance and then stay a more bland color. Despite this, they tend to grow seemingly well in my tank. Overall, this has been going fine but i recently looked at a picture of my talk about 6 months ago and i've found that my two main acros have really lost a lot of color despite growing quite a bit. Everything else in my tank seems to be doing quite well but a lot of my SPS are just generally bland. Also, all the other parameters of my tank are generally stable: I keep calc at around 400 and Alk at around 10 so I've come to the conclusion that lighting is most likely the issue. Should I significantly up the power of my lights? Should I lower it? also should I not have skimped out on a lower end LED system and gone all in? Everything else seems to be doing alright. Anyways, I'd just like to hear some input from you guys and I'll be happy to post some photos tomorrow when the lights come on (I don't want to shock everything right now as the lights are off.

 

[Ron Reefman]

I seriously don't think your coral coloration issue is due to the fact that your led was less expensive. I've had an Ocean Revive T247 over my frag tank since they first came out about 4 years ago, if my memory serves me.

It could be, in part, due to your color balance. I hesitate to give power levels because I don't know how deep your tank is, or how your corals are placed. Here is my situation. I have a 10" deep frag tank and my T247 is 20" off the water so I have more room to work in the tank. So I'm 'spilling' a fair amount of light outside the tank. Therefore I run my fixture at 90% blue and just 10% white and I have a PAR of 250 at the water surface.

The zooxanthellae that live inside your coral's polyps use the blue light to do photosynthesis which mostly feeds the coral. Less blue light, less photosynthesis, less food. I would suggest you change the mix so you have at least twice as much blue as you do white. You are currently at 40% on both channels. I'd try going to 30% white and 60% blue and see if that helps after a month or two. Depending on how deep your tank is, I might even consider increasing both channels by 10% to 20%, say 40% white and 80% blue. Increasing the ratio of blue to white from 1:1 is important. If a 2:1 ratio works, there is nothing wrong with trying a 3: 1 ratio. My frag tank has a 9:1 ratio and my sps frags heal and encrust and grow very well with the T247 at those numbers.

On a completely different tact, do you feed the corals? And how are the nitrate and phosphate levels in your tank? It's possible if you don't really feed the corals and the water is too clean the corals could be starving... especially with too little blue light. But I'd suggest you make changes slowly. Bump up the light and maybe do just a little coral food if you aren't already.

 

[Carol Night]

I find that consistency results in the best growth. If you think about it the sun does almost the exact same thing everyday as long as weather is not a variable. Moving the light, adjusting channels, and colors is going to keep your corals confused. I always find the happy medium and don't fix it if it ain't broke.