Acroporas and LED lights

Cenglezopoulos · Feb 21, 2017

Hello everyone,

So I ve been running this 60 liter nano reef tank for about six months now. I decided to try and host some acroporas 1 month ago, but things do not go as planned. They keep on dying. In the beginning I thought that my KH levels were to blame as they rised up to 12, obviously because of a mistake in the setting of my dosing pump. And perhaps KH was indeed a major issue. But I managed to drop the KH values to 8.3 and maintain them there for 2 weeks now with really small deviations (8.2-8.3). But Acroporas keep on dying. Other SPS do fine in the aquarium (Montiporas, Seriatoporas).
I also have high Mg levels (1560) for an unknown reason. While I ve deactivated the Mg channel in the dosing pump for 2 months now, the Mg levels do not seem to drop and I cannot understand why. I opened another thread regarding this issue and people told me that those Mg levels cannot cause harm and that many reefers keep Mg levels around 2000 to battle algae.
Yesterday I bought 3 more acropora frags. They have maintained their coloration till now but they have not expanded their polyps.
After considering that my water is ok, I thought that perhaps my lights are to blame. I am using Led lights Hydra 26 HD, set at 10k spectrum for 7 hours a day, and to a mostly blue spectrum for another 5 hours before they are completely turned off for the night.

Can anyone help me regarding my lights and my acroporas? Could my LED settings cause the problem? And which are the optimal settings?

Water parameters:

Salinity: 1.025-1.026 using Aquaforest salt
Mg: 1560
Ca: 440
KH 8.2-8.3
NO3: 2 ppm
PO4: undetectable

Thank you very much .

saltyfilmfolks · Feb 21, 2017

How did you set your Intensity on the lights, Par or lux meter?

Flow is SOOOO important. A coral under good light and good water will die under poor flow.
Look at the coral with dust or food in the water and count the particles compared to your index finger. count one on thousand. how far did the particle travel?

hart24601 · Feb 21, 2017

Just so you don't worry about lights, this is my old tank with hydra 26s and I won the acro growout constest with them as well. I would suspect flow, but it's not the lights I promise. How is the coralline algae doing?

Cenglezopoulos · Feb 21, 2017

hart24601 said:
Just so you don't worry about lights, this is my old tank with hydra 26s and I won the acro growout constest with them as well. I would suspect flow, but it's not the lights I promise. How is the coralline algae doing?

Which settings did you use ? I dont know about coraline to be honest but I can post a pic

Cenglezopoulos · Feb 21, 2017

saltyfilmfolks said:
How did you set your Intensity on the lights, Par or lux meter?

Flow is SOOOO important. A coral under good light and good water will die under poor flow.
Look at the coral with dust or food in the water and count the particles compared to your index finger. count one on thousand. how far did the particle travel?

I do not have a par or a lux meter so I just read that SPS need 10000k spectrum and I just set it to 10000k ....

Can u explain me again how to estimate my flow ? I ve got a 4000 litre/hour pump in 60 liter so I suppose its enough .... but can you explain again please ?

Cenglezopoulos · Feb 21, 2017

saltyfilmfolks said:
How did you set your Intensity on the lights, Par or lux meter?

Flow is SOOOO important. A coral under good light and good water will die under poor flow.
Look at the coral with dust or food in the water and count the particles compared to your index finger. count one on thousand. how far did the particle travel?

I suppose the particles travel around 10 cm each time my pump "pushes"

saltyfilmfolks · Feb 21, 2017

Flow is calculated in CM or in per second.

Color IMO, is not an issue. Folks grow coral under 8k 10k 14k 20k. Intensity and duration is more important.

hart24601 · Feb 21, 2017

Cenglezopoulos said:
Which settings did you use ? I dont know about coraline to be honest but I can post a pic

Tank looks healthy. They might just be acclimating. They don't like alk swings so that might be why the 1st ones didn't do well, but the lps and sps now looks good in there.

Settings don't matter too much really as long as you're not bleaching everything or have it set really low.

What's the flow around the acros? They might like a bit more.

saltyfilmfolks · Feb 21, 2017

hart24601 said:
Settings don't matter too much really as long as you're not bleaching everything or have it set really low.

how high over the tank are your lights. and what intensity are you using.?
The OP may be able to duplicate that or compare.

Cenglezopoulos · Feb 21, 2017

hart24601 said:
Tank looks healthy. They might just be acclimating. They don't like alk swings so that might be why the 1st ones didn't do well, but the lps and sps now looks good in there.

Settings don't matter too much really as long as you're not bleaching everything or have it set really low.

What's the flow around the acros? They might like a bit more.

KH has stabilized for 2 weeks now ... can u remember the settings of your lights in the photos you posted please ? Do u still use Hydra 26?

Cenglezopoulos · Feb 21, 2017

hart24601 said:
Tank looks healthy. They might just be acclimating. They don't like alk swings so that might be why the 1st ones didn't do well, but the lps and sps now looks good in there.

Settings don't matter too much really as long as you're not bleaching everything or have it set really low.

What's the flow around the acros? They might like a bit more.

Everything goes well except acroporas

Cenglezopoulos · Feb 21, 2017

saltyfilmfolks said:
how high over the tank are your lights. and what intensity are you using.?
The OP may be able to duplicate that or compare.

Lights are about 28-30 cm above water level .... They are set to 60% intensity right now ... on 60% the light's power is 83 watts ...

hart24601 · Feb 21, 2017

saltyfilmfolks said:
how high over the tank are your lights. and what intensity are you using.?
The OP may be able to duplicate that or compare.

Well the think is there were 5 of them over 48x24 so it's hard to give direct comp.

But I ran them 80% uv, v, db, rb and 40% w,r,g. 1hr ramps and 12hr full power. Easy and simple. I want to say have them 30" from bottom of the tank.

The bigger thing is the flow in that tank. I had 2mp40s, 1 gyre 150 all running 90% (gyre at 100%) constant mode, not reefcrest, but constant high flow. Plus the return pump. That was over 13,000 gph constant, not cycle up and down.

EDIT: I see you asked if I still use them. No, but I would. I got sick and had to tear down the tank, I made it FW and automated waterchanges because I wasn't home very often and when I was I couldn't work on it.

saltyfilmfolks · Feb 21, 2017

hart24601 said:
Well the think is there were 5 of them over 48x24 so it's hard to give direct comp.

But I ran them 80% uv, v, db, rb and 40% w,r,g. 1hr ramps and 12hr full power. Easy and simple. I want to say have them 30" from bottom of the tank.

The bigger thing is the flow in that tank. I had 2mp40s, 1 gyre 150 all running 90% (gyre at 100%) constant mode, not reefcrest, but constant high flow. Plus the return pump. That was over 13,000 gph constant, not cycle up and down.

EDIT: I see you asked if I still use them. No, but I would. I got sick and had to tear down the tank, I made it FW and automated waterchanges because I wasn't home very often and when I was I couldn't work on it.

Id say he could slowlu bump up the intensity and look into another powerhead.
The trick in a tank thah small is the different flow needs. Might have to move the softies down.

hart24601 · Feb 21, 2017

Yes, you are right, getting flow right for my mixed reef above required playing with powerhead locations and coral locations a LOT! I also had a biocube that was pretty nice and ended up making it all SPS because it was too hard finding a balance in that little 10g display.

Cenglezopoulos · Feb 21, 2017

saltyfilmfolks said:
Id say he could slowlu bump up the intensity and look into another powerhead.
The trick in a tank thah small is the different flow needs. Might have to move the softies down.

"Softies" you mean LPS ? They dont seem to have any problem ....

But I could try and add another flow pump ....

Cenglezopoulos · Feb 21, 2017

I have one jebao set to propel periodically (on/off every 1 second) ... but I have no other pump with such programming ... is there a problem if I add one more 2000 liter/hour pump constantly working?