zoanthids and leds

mfinn

mfinn

Active member
I have been away from zoanthids for a while and I am missing them.
Zoanthids use to be my thing for a long time.
So I was thinking.............................................

Only problem,,, I have switched my tanks over to all leds. Radion gen 1's.

Who has leds over zoanthids and how are they doing?
What kind of intensity settings are you running?
Are you able to acclimate them enough to have them at the top of the rockwork?
 
I have had mine for 6-7 weeks. I have 90 degree optics and my zoas do fine. Top of my rockwork is still pretty far away though. My tank is 30 inches tall and my rock goes about halfway up. Some zoas seem to love it. Armor of God do well higher, purple deaths are lower and seem to be bleaching. I guess it's all about the particular zoa. I have read some say that any zoa will acclimate to higher light, but I am skeptical as some seem to only thrive in lower light and some are better looking than ever under the higher intensity.
 
When my zoanthid tank was doing the best, I had a 250watt mh using a PFO HQI ballast, with a se Radium bulb and 2 x 75 watt VHO and the zoanthids did great.
So I know they love strong light, just not sure about the intensity of the leds
 
I just switched from t5s to leds and ive havent noticed any problems out of my zoas they have great color and are always open
 
Leds grow zoas great. I have plenty of different zoas and palys growing under leds. What I will tell you that don't go over 150 par or the zoas will shrink as they have in my frag tank.
 
They will do OK. Some will melt under long term exposure to LED that did not in the same tank under 250W HQI, IME. Some flourish, some are so-so and some melt. Under HQI, all flourished for me.

IMO, the LED puts out too much of the wrong kind of light and/or too little of the right for a wide variety of organisms, but clearly enough for some. Par is not the issue since they can be well over 400 under HQI and grow like crazy (like 2-4 inches deep right underneath).
 
mfinn said:
I have been away from zoanthids for a while and I am missing them.
Zoanthids use to be my thing for a long time.
So I was thinking.............................................

Only problem,,, I have switched my tanks over to all leds. Radion gen 1's.

Who has leds over zoanthids and how are they doing?
What kind of intensity settings are you running?
Are you able to acclimate them enough to have them at the top of the rockwork?
Click to expand...

ive got mine under my gen 1 radion in maybe 10" of water. they love it!
 
I'm more interested in settings and they way you did things rather than just saying leds are great, etc.

What kind of intensity settings are you running?
Are you able to acclimate them enough to have them at the top of the rockwork?
 
Fair - for my part, I had AI Sol, Maxspect Razor 16K and Radion XR30w. I went from 4 to 12 hours of photo period and from 20-70%. I didn't jack around with color much and stayed at 14K. I tried each for about 2 months. In the end, I was 70% on the radion at 14K, for comparison.

I could never get eagle eyes, midas, rastas or pinwheels to do anything higher than 10-12" deep - at best, they would grow slowly and not expand all the way... at worst, they would melt. They all thrived 2-4" under the HQI running at 10 hours at 100%. I had some triple green ones (nuclear holocost) that did great under either. I moved them up under the LEDs about 2 inches every week, or so, which I felt was slow enough, but perhaps I was wrong.

My conclusion is that the lights are supplying the wrong kind of light, or to little of the right kind, for the zoas that suffered, but obviously the green zoas didn't care.

Hope this helps some, but my conclusions and experiment is hardly scientific. However, pay attention to the posts about zoas and palys melting - the larger percentage is under LED.
 
jda, ever find any that liked the leds higher in the reef?

I have some that I've seen refered to as "texas trash" in my 50 that are at the top of the rock work that are doing great. ( I was really hoping that they would melt )
 
The green radioactives did great. I had some pink zippers that got to about 8", but I would not go any farther since I had no frags and was too lazy to frag the colony rock and didn't like the look of them. I have some no-names green ones with orange centers that did OK... same with lunar eclipse and whammin watermelon. The eagle eyes and rastas were ok up to about 8", but I was afraid to take them any higher.

I had darth mauls just melt away in days, but they are thriving otherwise. The tubbs blue melted too, but it took longer. Both of these were like 6-8".

For the most part, I just screwed around with frags that I had colonies elsewhere in the tank. I didn't risk any non-duplicated colonies or frags... especially once I knew that I was not going to go with LED for the tank.
 
jda said:
The green radioactives did great. I had some pink zippers that got to about 8", but I would not go any farther since I had no frags and was too lazy to frag the colony rock and didn't like the look of them. I have some no-names green ones with orange centers that did OK... same with lunar eclipse and whammin watermelon. The eagle eyes and rastas were ok up to about 8", but I was afraid to take them any higher.

I had darth mauls just melt away in days, but they are thriving otherwise. The tubbs blue melted too, but it took longer. Both of these were like 6-8".

For the most part, I just screwed around with frags that I had colonies elsewhere in the tank. I didn't risk any non-duplicated colonies or frags... especially once I knew that I was not going to go with LED for the tank.
Click to expand...



Cool, thanks.



BTW, what are you using now for light?
 
HQI - 250W 14K Phoenix on HQI (M80) Ballasts. I use OceanLights and AquaSpaceLights (old school) both by AquaMedic.
 
right now since I've added a bunch of new frags, i have it on all blue NO White and blue is at 40-50% only to allow for slow acclimation of polyps to my lighting, every other day I'll turn nob up a little till I get to my desired setting previously.
that's the good thing with LED you can change intensity and the color.
 
i have rastas, tubbs,zippers,dragons,goblins,blue hornet, utter chaos and others all between 6"-14" below cree retrofits, run at 60%blue-40%white and about 80% total power.

all were acclimated per my standard acclimation-start on sand and bump up 4-6" every two weeks or so. i've had a couple losses, but no more than when i was running MH.
i will say growth is probably not as fast as MH, fast enough for me, though -i'm in no hurry... color is great.

just another observation, growth on sps not as fast either, but i'm in no hurry... my power bill and wallet thank me!
 
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