Who owns a Tek Light?

[Moogled]

I recently switched to a 36" Tek Light. My previous lights were the T5 Coralife PCs.

I'm running two 10ks, one Super Blue, and one Actinic bulb. Alot of my corals seem to be staying the same with some corals not extending as much.

My guess is that when the PCs were in use, they needed more light so they extended more? This is what's happening to my Anthelia.

What are your Tek Light experiences? Did you have massive growth after upgrading to them? After 3 weeks, everything is still the same so I'm fairly disappointed with this light :( .

[Chowder]

My expierience with it was positive. I have a 48" with 8 Giesemann bulbs over a 72 gallon bow. Two miday, three atinic pluses and three atinics. Been running it for about 4 months. When I first hooked it up I had some Sps that lightened up and rtned and others that went pastel colours. My polyps shortened and lps seem quit happy. I have had positive growth on the sps that is left. I would compare it to my other sps dominated tank as the same. One cap I have that was about 2 inches by 1 inch has doubled in size in that time. I started noticing growth after about a month and a half.

[Moogled]

Why did your polyps shorten? I always assumed that extension was a good sign and that if they shorten, they might want to retreat from something.

My fungia plate coral extended longer tentacles but when I had the T5s PC on, it would bloat up once in a while and look healthy. Now it just extends its tentacles and the body doesn't look very full.

[Chowder]

My polyps as in zoos shortened up because they were getting a better or stronger light sorce. Long or extended polyps usually mean they are not getting enough light. So extending or making a bigger surface or getting closer to the light source to get as much light as possible. This is how I understand it. I could be wrong does anyone want to chime in.

[albert_dao]

Yup, that's right.

It's confusing, though, because there's a difference between "extending" and "reaching".

For the most part, extention describes healthy polyp feeding/expansion behavior (there's a bit more to this where it gets confusing, but that's beyond the scope of this post, atm).

Polyp reaching is where, like jkhchris said, a polyp is physically stretching as much of its body as it can in order to acquire more light.

Hope that helps.

[Moogled]

Oh okay, that clears things up a bit.

The corals look fairly healthy, they just don't "reach" anymore so I think that's a good thing. I'm still waiting on the growth so I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong or if there's something I can do to help facilitate coral growth.

So far I just dose Aragomilk bi-weekly; no other additives into the tank.

When corals "reach" because they need more light, they can also look healthy, right? The Anthelia sure was reaching for the light and had extremely long stalks. Now they're at 25% of what they were at before.

Boggling.

[dreef]

I have an 8 tube Tek T5 on legs over a 70 gallon, i previously had a no name T5 fixture before,and there's no comparision.Everything is growing awesome and spreading like mad,even my zoos.Before i had zoos on the bottom,and they developed long streched stocks,now,nice and low,tight growth,even on the bottom.My rbta is up on the highest rockwork,but rather than being right on top,it prefers the side of the rock...too bright :)

[fishoholic]

Everything is growing awesome and spreading like mad,even my zoos.Before i had zoos on the bottom,and they developed long streched stocks,now,nice and low,tight growth,even on the bottom.

We had the same experience with our zoos and other corals once we switched to Tek T5 lights. Within a month everything looked better in our tank then it ever did with our 250w MH

[albert_dao]

It's funny, because Tek's are at the lower end of the high-end HOT5 products :P

Aquactinics and ATI Powermodules are out-of-this-world bright!

[Moogled]

No, it's not funny.

:| :| :|

Maybe I don't have enough corals to see a noticeable difference!

[LeeR]

i switched from a 70W mh to the 24" tek and it fried my Xenia and is doing a number on my mushrooms and zoas :sad:

[Der_Iron_Chef]

Crap. Guess I'll have to take it easy when my Tek arrives (and I'm going from PC!). Did you ease the corals into it? Put window screening over the tank, etc?

[LeeR]

No but i just set hole new tank up yesterday and i got some eggcrate to put on the top and i raised the legs to the highest position for tomorrow. So hopefully that will help.

[Der_Iron_Chef]

Gotcha. Try keeping the lights on for only 4-6 hours the first week or so, and slowly increase the photoperiod. That'll help the corals adjust, as well.

[LeeR]

Good call i will try that as well. Thanks!

I'm going to try and get some pictures of my new set up tomorrow after noon or morning (going to the Vancouver aquarium :mrgreen: ) and will start a thread.