Hammer Coral not happy with LEDs
 

My hammer coral used to be huge under my MH lights. Ever since I switched to eshine's Cree 3 watt LEDs with white and royal blues, they don't extend their polyps. My torch coral is huge, frogspawn is decent. Hammer is terrible.

Any suggestions on what spectrum of lights I could add to maybe make the hammer happy?

These are what I have:

http://eshinesystems.com/aqua/60w-cr...ium-light.html

How many over what size tank?

My guess is not a lack of spectrum, it's just too much light. Some LPS seem to respond better than others but some will not do well under too much light from LEDs. Is the unit dimmable?

4 lights over a 7 ft tank.

http://i329.photobucket.com/albums/l...h/42389cad.jpg

2 sideways and 2 lengthwise.

I guess I could try moving the coral to a lower depth. Currently 12" below the waterline.

Above pic is an old pic. Tank doesn't look like that anymore except for the lighting.

I also have the these lights and believe you have too much light. The E-shine fixture does have an issue with spot lighting corals sometimes. Might just have to move the light or the coral over a bit.

It's probably too much light, creating something called light shock. LEDs are misleading they are bright but you can't run them that bright, especially with optics. Your tank should appear dimmer with LEDs as appose to MHs, most people adjust the light intensity based on visual appearance but this doesn't work. I did the same thing with my LED fixture, ran it too strong and many LPS did poorly and I toasted a few SPS. I now run it at a fraction of what I use to and things are much better.

Dim down the unit, run your blues closer to about 50-60% and your whites even lower at about 30-40% and see how things do. It will take a few weeks for things to actually improve.

how long has the hammer been in the new tank??? probably still getting use to it or still ****ed about handling:)

Thanks guys. I'll turn down the lights.

Same thing with my birdnest. Too bad I can not dim my light down.

I run mine at 100% and everything in my tank is great, including the hammer. Even when the hammer was half way up the tank, it was still opening fully so I doubt it's the lights.

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I would say that the 60w Cree eshine don't have super great coverage, however when I first got my DIY led from rapid running on my 75, I definately bleached my flower anemone and toasted a few encrusting monti and all my digi, also never seen stylos bleach so bad. Its true what others have said, they don't look bright to the eye and you definately can't match intensity by looking at your tank. I had to turn my LEDs down to 50% which looks dim but colours are coming back now... Lesson learned these crees have superior penetration and par.