Is shading BS?
- Thread starter madweazl
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madweazl
2500 Club Member
Another month has passed with no observable changes to the shaded areas of the acroporas. We're set to close on a home the end of April so I may only have one more month to compare (no telling what will happen during the move but hopefully the tank transition is relatively painless).
Today
29 Dec
Today
29 Dec
Get/borrow a used MH reflector and shine your kessil up into it and turn the power up 5% to handle the drop. This has terrible aesthetic, but you will be amazed at how many different parts of your coral get hit. If we put a LumenMax Elite, for example, over a Kessil tank, there are lines of demarcation on every coral that look different instantly - like somebody drew on them with a marker where the light-line was.
If this thread is still active the next time that I got to one of the local shops, I will take some photos of a 180G lit with 3 kessils. They have mostly MBP&S that are in the 12 to 16 inch range and every single one of them is dead on the bottom. They really love to sell the Kessils and their typical line is that the death is perfectly normal.
Don't underestimate that larger colonies make light even less available in the middle than smaller ones. Personally, I think that you will have a different opinion of this when you have 6 to 8 inch colonies with hundreds of branches.
That is kind of funny because I have been saying for years they should make a led fixture that was indirect, this would solve shading issues. I work in the lighting industry non-aqurium related and we have a ton of fixtures like that. That's how we overcame the short commings of led. A little light loss but allot more even lighting, of course you would loose the shimmer.
Fact of the matter is sometimes the base dies because of flow it has been known for a long time, that doesn't mean self shading is not a issue. I have observed it with my kessils and now I also run t5. Problem is now a days so few people actually have large colonies. So many tanks look like frag tank now adays. Running more leds can help or angling some toward the back and some towards the front can help.
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OP
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madweazl
2500 Club Member
A little over five months later, no changes yet. I really need to cut back and relocate one of these as they're now growing on top of one another (the pink acro on the right is literally growing onto the other now).
