Staaan's Tank Problem! HELP SOUGHT!

poolkeeper1 said:
Are you running you Led's at full power on the Blues and Whites? If So How Many MA are your Drivers rated at? That may be the Issue more so than them being 12" off the Water. Mine are right @ 12" and I have 115 Led's over a 48" x 24" area but only run them @ 750MA tops and 3 hrs of my total time Is from 0% to 100% Sunrise/Sunset.
You may just have them running full blast and If you have 1050MA Drivers or higher you may be burning everything, I would cut them down and shorten the Time they are on and see if that helps. JMO
Bill
Click to expand...

My LED drivers aren't dimmable. And I never adjusted the driver or anything.. just "plug-n-played" it.

This is my driver (have 4 of them).
http://reefledlights.com/shop/mean-well-lpc-35-700/

I have 12 LEDs on each driver.
 
Reference

Reference

Staaan said:
My LED drivers aren't dimmable. And I never adjusted the driver or anything.. just "plug-n-played" it.

This is my driver (have 4 of them).
http://reefledlights.com/shop/mean-well-lpc-35-700/

I have 12 LEDs on each driver.
Click to expand...

meanwell-lpc-35-700, The 700 should mean It's a 700 MA driver as far as I know all mine are marked with the 700 except one that said 1050 and I thought that may have been my issue with one string always burning up the led's. It was replaced and all has been fine since!
Hope you get it all figured out, But DIY has moments like this all the time as we don't have R&D Dept's LOL
Bill:hmm5:
 
Stan what you can do is get a egg crate and put it over you tank that will cut some of the light so you can acclimate your coral to your leds then after 2 week you can take it off and all should be good . And if i was you i would us carbon it will remove toxsine in the water that some corals put out like leathers
 
Yeah when xenia dies it smells so bad and it is never good for the tank at all.

When I did the change over I lost so much of it but that was my fault. I took it out of the sump and dumped it in the trash.
 
+1 On LED intensity. I had the same issue with my Slimer; When it was under MH it was fine and under the LED's it paled out slightly. I needed to dim the lights to fix it, so in your case raise them off the water.

About the tank now, what are the current parameters? Your initial readings were on the low side and if they came up too quick that could cause problems. I know my Monti Caps didn't like ALK swings. :uzi:
 
I also doubt it was the ESV salt. How much Ca and Kh did you add to the salt and how exactly did you do it?
 
Definitely not the salt.

All my levels started off low (and stayed low obviously) because I started out with Instant Ocean salt.. and didn't dose anything for the first 2 months the tank was up.

I did one 10g WC with the IO then when I switched to ESV salt I did a 20g WC.

Today....

-Changed out carbon
-Did 10g WC (w/ ESV salt), brought salinity up to 1.026 (was at 1.023 previously)

And thats about it.. besides debating the entire day on what to do.

As Batt600 said... I have what I'm now FINALLY understanding is TOO MANY LEDs lighting my tank.

When I first set up the LEDs (before I even had the tank in my possession :lol:) I had 18 Cree XR-E White & 18 XR-E Royal Blue with 70 degree optics, and 3 non-dimmable (constant current) drivers.

Naturally I wanted independent control of the White and Blue... but with 3 drivers that wasn't going to happen.

So I ended up creating

2 Drivers - Controlling mixture of white and blue
1 Driver - Controlling on Blue...

I wanted a bit more blue when the daylights were on... after seeing Jarrett and Dr. Harry's tanks with their 20,000K Radium MH bulbs... I was really set on the bluer look..

And for some reason I thought there wasn't going to be enough light...and it was going to be the same price to either add 12 more LEDs and a non-dimmable driver OR replace 3 existing drivers with Dimmable ones (which I probably should have done).

And I obviously (stupidly - not knowing better) opted for MORE light... I figured getting everything bigger better and brighter was the way to go... well that is obviously kicking my buttocks pretty hard right now.

The color of the tank with daylights on is really awesome... but its just way too PAR or light intensity for the corals to handle... some are actually absolutely fine... but some aren't opening. What I find weird.. is that it took 2 months of being blasted with this light for it finally to show some signs... that it was indeed too much light.

I think that even if I bring the fixture up its going to be too much light...

So starting today I'm just running 2 drivers (the 2 that control both blue and white)... only thing that sucks is it ends up being 18 White and 6 Blue.... so the tank looks pretty yellow... and the spacing of the LEDs creates an ugly light pattern because the blue LEDs are far off to the right and left... basically leaving a beam of yellow light in the middle.

Soo... overall I think my whole problem is 2 separate problems that combined together...

#1 - Lights WAAAAY too strong.

#2 - Cal, Alk & Mag too low (reasoning for why SPS is not happy any more in addition to surplus of light).

Unfortunately financially right now I won't be able to do anything about getting dimmable drivers..

So I guess I'm stuck with using 24 LEDs for now... with a tank that is an ugly color...

I don't think egg crate will really do anything.... it barley diffuses anything...
 
your on the right track by raising the lights, WCs and carbon...slowly get the parameters up again...it will take time.
 
Use Window screen to difuse the light until you can fix it properly, It's cheap and it works. You can make a frame just like a screen for a window. Only tools you need are a hacksaw and the roller to push the spline in to hold the screen.
This will work and It's better than having a yellow looking tank. Hope this helps
Bill
 
Stann to much going on at once!! Before your heads falls off stop and think. First get levels were they are and see what happens in 1 week, no change then raise the lights. No change then it must be something else. To many people in this hobby do to much at once and to quick and never find the real reason. If you need more polpys to try out let me know but reading this thread over I think your levels are off and tank is to new to hold it over....
Dont forget you went from a 6gal to 46gal. A 6gal can just add top off and levels will be fine. You are getting to be a real reefer!!!
 
Lol.

I think its the lights... most of the LPS from my other tank is still open because they're used to the intense LEDs..

But most of the new stuff in the tank (that was never in my old tank) isn't doing good.

I'm just not sure if the paleness in the SPS in my tank is due to the lights or low parameters oooorr combo of both?

Find it kinda weird that it took ~3 weeks for things to show that the LEDs are burning them...
 
The ugly clam is doing fine.

The maxima isn't totally open.. but its open.

To be honest.. my "other" problem thats making all of stuff harder to deal with is that I have to fill up my car.. so I can't go out and spend $70+ on salifert or better test kits..
 
What I'm debating now.. is just slowly saving up for dimmable drivers... or selling my fixture and just build new fixture with less LEDs...
 
Ok Stann dropped off his water and the results are in!!!!!!!!

ALK= 11.2
Calcium= 410
Mag = 1320
Po4 = .11
salinity = 1.023


I think dose more calcium so your alk drops and you should be fine
Also raise those light like i said and lmk what the lux meter says
 
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