My Lighting Spectrum??

Eb0la11 · #1 01-20-2010, 04:06 AM

Edit*** Ok so I dont think it has anything to do with my lighting. See page two, post number 16 of the forum for info on my water parameters. That's now what I need help with. Cheers!

Hey guys,

so my corals are not doing that well lately and Im trying to figure out what has made them go south a bit.

I can attribute it to either a bit of poor water quality, which has been rectified lately, though Im still not dosing but have changed over probably 40% of my water in the last 3 weeks, but I think it might be my lighting.

For example, my candy cane coral is showing little to no colour. It opens up fine at night and I feed about once a week, but it has no colour. Nor does my pulsing xenia anymore and it has shrunk.

My light is a Coralife AquaLight Pro with 3x 250W MH and 4x 96W Actinics that run for a 12 hour period every day.

My tank is 24" deep and my light is 4" off the surface. So my candy cane is probably 16" from it right now.

What do you guys think? I need to learn what "high intensity" lighting would be, would this be like right near the surface or what? Where is my medium intensity light range?

viperfish · #2 01-20-2010, 04:21 AM

250W is tons of light for a candycane. How old are your bulbs?

Eb0la11 · #3 01-20-2010, 06:28 AM

They are about 4.5 months old now.

Bloodasp · #4 01-20-2010, 07:15 AM

I think it might have more to do with your water parameters than anything.

Eb0la11 · #5 01-21-2010, 05:52 AM

Yeah I would guess so too, I'll need to get some test kits and take some readings pretty soon here, might need to start dosing if I wanna keep corals.

Does anyone have success with corals without dosing in a similar setup with a good light, good skimmer and frequent water changes?

ScubaSteve · #6 01-21-2010, 06:03 AM

Alright, I'm probably going to take wrath from people here saying this but... MH bulbs DO NOT change much over their lifetime. Ok, so maybe there is a slight decrease in output but it is minimal. I use MH consistenly in my reseach and I have to calibrate the lamp every week; no change over the past year. Your flourescents will die overtime but not that much in 4.5 months.

Your problem seems like params OR you have some chemical warfare going on. When you say the candy cane has no colour, does it looked bleached? More importantly, is it receding? What else is hangin' out in that tank?

fishytime · #7 01-23-2010, 02:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eb0la11

Yeah I would guess so too, I'll need to get some test kits and take some readings pretty soon here, might need to start dosing if I wanna keep corals.

Does anyone have success with corals without dosing in a similar setup with a good light, good skimmer and frequent water changes?

Check out Carmen's 75g bowfront thread.......probably one of the nicest, low tech low budget, non dosed tanks you will ever see...http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/sho...=45688&page=10

ScubaSteve · #8 01-23-2010, 05:04 PM

I keep a 20G with the 150W Coralife Aquapro, HOB filter with carbon, no skimmer. I do water changes every week to two weeks. I'll do it more frequenty is something looks unhappy. I find my colt and frogspawn to be like 'canaries in the coal mine' to let me know it something isn't right. I have eerything in that tank... softies, LPS and SPS. I have a HUGE toadstool in the tank which is a bit of a polluter that upsets the others from times to time but typically I find with carbon this goes away. Oh, and I keep my candy cane right on the sand and he grows like stupid.

Definitely get some test kits. You might it could be something as simple as your pH being off. Test, then dose IF you need it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eb0la11

Yeah I would guess so too, I'll need to get some test kits and take some readings pretty soon here, might need to start dosing if I wanna keep corals.

Does anyone have success with corals without dosing in a similar setup with a good light, good skimmer and frequent water changes?