SPS Care

[MadReefer19]

Honestly I don't know if I'd jump on the "lights are hung too high" crew so fast. I use an 8 bulb sunpower over my 90 gallon at 10" off the water. Meaning I have. 34" from lights to substrate.

With a 10" deep tank and the lights 24" up he is at the exact same distance, with probably more par since he has less water to attenuate light. I have no issues with color or growth either at this height.

As far as spectrum goes. I agree with the others. Use a mixture of blue and white bulbs from a reputable brand and growth and color differences will be negligible. Color is so subjective, what you feel to be the best color would be different from me or anyone else. Tweak your bulbs to deliver the color and overall ambience you personally like.

Just don't make the mistake of getting on BigR corals or Jason Fox's websites and saying "what do I do to get THOSE colors" because those pictures are all taken under strictly blue LEDs with some heavy filtering and digital correction. You won't achieve those colors by running strictly blue LEDs. Corals need an array of pigments in order to develop different colored fluoroproteins and chromoproteins. The pics on those websites are just for show. I don't imagine they look like that ALL the time


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I have lowered them now as well to test the theory out. Some SPS in the tank have really good polyp extension. However, others have browned out and some are even losing some flesh.

I have 3 cool white lights and a variety of blue and actinic lights to give a good spectrum.

I definitely agree with you, I have been able to take some stunning pictures of some really average colours but due to the way the picture was taken it looked 10x better than it was so I know what you mean. I know to that SPS require a lot of care so I want to get them stable and then start to work with elements that encourage certain colours.

 

[MadReefer19]

I'd look at water quality before your lighting. Your tank is only 10" tall, I'm sure you're still getting plenty of par even with the lights at 25" above the water line. My tank is 24" tall and I have the fixtures more than 12" above the water line and still get 400-600 par mid tank (ATI Hybrid 8 bulb). I believe you said you recently put them in the tank and over the course of a few weeks, they browned out. Acros will do that especially if they were shipped but even if there were transferred locally, they can still brown out. I could buy local only an hour away from me, put it in my tank and have it brown out. It will color up over time but I don't sweat it as long as my water is rock steady and not fluctuating at all. How are you testing and how often are you testing? People will always say their parameters are good but they actually fluctuate daily.

Lighting is about 10" above the corals now so we will see if this shows improvement over the next few days.

I ordered these corals from Bali so they arrived in beautiful colouration but then after a few days it browned out and some of them had their flesh peel off.

I am testing calcium, magnesium, KH, SG, nitrates, phosphates and ph. I test them every 2 - 3 days. Parameters are steady at the moment so I am thinking it could be due to the system being so new.

 

[MadReefer19]

When the light is closer to the waterline, there will be a lot of light hitting the sides of the aquarium and reflecting back into the tank. This is especially important for light levels further down in the tank. When the light is further above the waterline, more light goes completely outside the bounds of the aquarium and is lost. I can't say if that effect is more significant than the absorption of the light in air vs water, but it will certainly be a factor. Of course with such a shallow tank it might not be as important, buts its really hard to estimate. Borrowing or purchasing a PAR meter would get to the bottom of this very easily.

I am trying to get a PAR meter now to test it out so hopefully I get 1 soon. My light unit is 45 cm wide so is my tank so the unit fits perfectly over the tank. Is there any particular duration that the lights should run on the tank? How many hours in a day?

 

[SpSChief85]

I am trying to get a PAR meter now to test it out so hopefully I get 1 soon. My light unit is 45 cm wide so is my tank so the unit fits perfectly over the tank. Is there any particular duration that the lights should run on the tank? How many hours in a day?

I have a 8 bulb ati with 6 blue+ 1 coral plus and 1 purple + and 2 actinic sbars. I have my fixture 15" above a 80g deep blue 48x24x16 my new frags are about 27" from the fixture and getting around 350 to 400 par. With this setup I get 300 par easy 30" from fixture. I think the browning out is due to your frags being new to the system... it's been over a month since your last post... do you have any success yet? Any pictures? Let us know how things are going

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[pisanoal]

Lighting is about 10" above the corals now so we will see if this shows improvement over the next few days.

I ordered these corals from Bali so they arrived in beautiful colouration but then after a few days it browned out and some of them had their flesh peel off.

I am testing calcium, magnesium, KH, SG, nitrates, phosphates and ph. I test them every 2 - 3 days. Parameters are steady at the moment so I am thinking it could be due to the system being so new.

I'm definitely not an SPS expert, however there is a video where Jason Fox talks about his coral system and collection etc. Pretty neat video if you can find it on youtube. But he mentions that maricultured corals are very difficult to keep colored up in our aquariums because of the nature of the maricultured system. Basically these are acros that are usually brought from deeper down and put in just a couple feet of water. They get BLASTED with sunlight, way more PAR then we could even imagine of getting in our tanks. The colors that they get this way can be very hard to keep. So if these corals are Bali Maricultured pieces, there could be some answers there.

Just a thought.

 

[awaxdee]

Good info

 

[OceansMotion]

I believe just like many others have said, the lighting is fine. However stability is the key. Everything from kh, ca, mg, ph etc. flow is also very important, just make sure it's not direct flow. I always go for indirect. A friend of mine had a calcium reactor and his tank was very stable and a beautiful tank. His calcium was over 600 but the alk was stable around 8.
Feeding the coral is also essential. Coral have a symbiotic relationship with an algae (zoox) and they use photosynthesis and feed the coral. However a coral will benefit by having extra food. I don't worry about a coral browning out because I like to make sure it's healthy first and encrust over before I like to try for color. It's better to have a not enough light than way too much imo. You will be fine.
Also +1 for the post about JF. I've seen that and it's so true. He's a smart guy and knows his corals.


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