Ai 32hd hydra on a waterbox cube 20 gallon

[Sajacobs]

Hi there,

I really hope someone can help me? I have a waterbox cube 20 gallons, I had a spare ai 32hd hydra so I popped it on but I'm not sure what settings it should be on! It's mainly softies atm but I'm hoping to make it a mixed reef soon!
So if you can help me figure out what I need to set it at that would be amazing! Thank you for your time!

 

[PatW]

I think that is more light than you need. It is likely to overdo the PAR values. From my understanding, soft corals tend to not be photosynthetic so all you need is enough light for YOU to enjoy the tank. Now the Caribbean Gorgonians are almost all photosynthetic so they are different.

Most large polyp stoney corals are photosynthetic but you will not need much light for them.

When you get into the SPS corals, the lighting requirements go up and that means relatively high par values especially for acropora Corals.

The best thing to do is to measure your light outputs with a PAR meter. I understand that you can do this with a cell phone and an app. But I would do it just in the air.

The thing is if you don’t have high intensity light loving corals, you can just set the lights for your own tastes.

For photosynthetic corals, most of the light they use is in the blue part of the spectrum like UV, Violet, Royal Blue etc and not so much in green, yellow, and red. If you want detailed spectrum suggestions, Bulk Reef Supply has you tube videos on this subject for these lights.