SPS Lighting?

[loganlemaster]

I am wanting to ad some sps to my softy tank. tanks been up and running a couple years. Its a shallow tank 12" deep. My light is a 420r 16k razor. I took some par readings at the top of my rocks its currently only 150 and 100 on the sand bed. The lights dialed back right now, so i can put some serious par in the tank if/when needed. My question is when I add a couple sps frags will they require more light then what i am putting in the tank now. Or should I leave it at the 150 level and bring it up slowly. Water parameters are no3 udetectable po4 .02 alk 8.0 calc 420-450. Thanks in advance.

 

[Veosk]

If you start with some Montipora 100-150 should be fine. My SPS seemed to like lower lighting.

 

[reefmutt]

They will probably want more eventually .. but maybe the best way to go about it would be to try to mimick the light conditions that the new Frags are coming from..

 

[loganlemaster]

They will probably want more eventually .. but maybe the best way to go about it would be to try to mimick the light conditions that the new Frags are coming from..

That's kinda what I'm trying to do but the tanks the frags come out of don't appear to be as bright as mine. Mine seems to be very very bright yet only getting 150 par. I can turn the lights up and get higher par values it just seems ultra bight!

 

[reefmutt]

What lights are being used over the frags?
Blue leds don’t look as bright as white leds..
Basically, an led combo that is mimicking 20k won’t look as bright to you as 16k led combo..

 

[jda]

There is a wide range here... there is "enough" and there is also "flourishing." Most acropora, other than deep waters, as well as MBP&S do not even think of starting to saturate until they get to 350-400+ and most can do well more than this.

While lots can live with 150 PAR, they are probably not thriving and more prone to issues with alk, temp and parameters swings.

 

[loganlemaster]

There is a wide range here... there is "enough" and there is also "flourishing." Most acropora, other than deep waters, as well as MBP&S do not even think of starting to saturate until they get to 350-400+ and most can do well more than this.

While lots can live with 150 PAR, they are probably not thriving and more prone to issues with alk, temp and parameters swings.

I guess i will ramp up the intensity weekly. I am a long ways from 350-400. I would assume not enough light is as bad or worse than to much.

 

[loganlemaster]

What lights are being used over the frags?
Blue leds don't look as bright as white leds..
Basically, an led combo that is mimicking 20k won't look as bright to you as 16k led combo..

They were under leds not sure what brand.

 

[reefmutt]

Too much is as bad as too little but too much led can have pretty quick and deadly results whereas too little won’t kill anything immediately. They’ll just lose color and or turn brown and then begin to rtn from the base.
Always more safe to start on the low side and work up in intensity

 

[DesertReefT4r]

Just start to slowly ramp up the lighting a little each week. Most sps want 250-350 PAR to really thrive.