New 400W. Coral Placement?

[landon]

It's crazy how excited I am about the lights on my tank. Everything looks way more wicked and i believe i see more polyp extension on the corals (Whether this is true or not, i don't know). I thought my 250W MH was good but this blows it out of the water. Thanks to Warehouse Aquarium i picked up the new fixture and ballast last night and assembled it. Didn't have much time to enjoy it since it was getting late and the lights needed to go off.

Anyhow, for acclimation, I'm starting the bulb at about 16 inches off the surface of the water. I have a bunch of SPS directly near the top and directly below the bulb and I want to see what thoughts were on if I should rearrange (ugh). a few are encrusted on the two 70 pd rocks but if i need to savage most of the colony i will. below is a list of the sps that are directly under the bulb and ranged from highest to lowest (that I'm concerned about)

85 gallon (24 inches deep)

Pearlberry colony (about 5 inches from surface)
sunset monti
green elkhorn colony
purple tipped porcilipora
rainbow monti
Garf bonsai colony (about 12 inches below surface)
Redplanet
Jedi mind trick frag (it's been in tank for a couple months, worried might be too much light)
Pink Stylophora (about 12 inches)

 

[merkywater]

Landon how many hrs a day were you running the 250? IME cutting this time by half and and running that amount of time for the first week, then increasing the light duration 30 mins a week until desired time frame is reached, has always worked for me. For example I had a 250 MH and went to 400 MH, with the 250 I was running 8hrs a day, so with the 400 I cut the time frame in half to 4hrs a day then each week I increased it by 30 mins... week 2, 4hrs 30mins....week 3, 5 hrs etc

Note I did start out with the pendant high and after I reached desired amount of time, say 8/hrs, I then began to lower the pendant to final desired height. You can cut the light period even more to be safe, that way you do not need to move corals! Start with like 2.5 to 3 hrs a day and work up.

Nate

 

[landon]

I was running the 250W a total of 7 hours a day. they ran from 11AM till 1PM and then 3PM till 8PM. I was having a cyano outbreak for a sec a while back and changed up the lighting cycle, which worked great! (thanks Beccamc10).

I figured to help with the ajustment, i would continue this with the 400W, to help acclimate to the new light....

merkywater;616680 wrote: Landon how many hrs a day were you running the 250? IME cutting this time by half and and running that amount of time for the first week, then increasing the light duration 30 mins a week until desired time frame is reached, has always worked for me. For example I had a 250 MH and went to 400 MH, with the 250 I was running 8hrs a day, so with the 400 I cut the time frame in half to 4hrs a day then each week I increased it by 30 mins... week 2, 4hrs 30mins....week 3, 5 hrs etc

Nate

 

[merkywater]

Sounds good...If you want to run same schedule I'd say run for an 1hr and 1/2 then like 2 hrs 1/2 same principle just cutting lighting in half.

 

[landon]

I ain't one to gossip... but what I had heard.... Doesn't it take at least 3 hours for coral to complete a photo cycle?

 

[merkywater]

If that is what you are going off of then go back to my original suggestion and cut the 7hr light cycle with 250's in half and you will reach the min , and run them for 3hrs 1/2. I am just giving you what has worked for me buddy.

 

[landon]

Thanks for the help! I'll try that and see what happens.

 

[merkywater]

Landon;616688 wrote: Thanks for the help! I'll try that and see what happens.

No problem man anytime!

 

[hnguyen]

Landon, I'm going to steal your thread for a moment, I'm running 400w radiums on my 60 cube and I was wondering about acclimating coral from lower wattage tanks as well. I understand that I should cut back my photo period and raise it slow over weeks time. Now here's my question.

Say I already have coral in my tank that is acclimated to 400w lights and I put new coral in there and I cut down my photo period, a week later I put more coral in my tank from lower lighting. So do I have to cut back on my photo period again and start over? I run my lights 6.5 hours a day, I've just cut it down to 3.5 hours last night when I introduced new coral in my system. I plan to add more come this weekend so I want to make sure I do this right and not kill anything.