LED Schedule/Intensity

madducks42 · Jul 13, 2017

I’ve been slowly upping the percentage on our Hydra52’s and I’m worried about giving the corals and the anemone too much light. I’m curious what other people here use for their schedule. Also what are the early signs of bleaching because obviously I want to avoid that. We don’t have much in the tank currently, a branching hammer coral, green/orange polyps, and a sebae anemone. When we picked up the hammer coral from the LFS the person who worked there said something about coral looking more luminescent than normal as a precursor to bleaching. I keep looking at the hammer coral and getting paranoid that it’s too much light. Here’s our current schedule. I started the lights really low and have been ramping up to this over the past 30 days.

Lights go off completely at midnight.

Lawlboom · Jul 13, 2017

I've been reading forums, articles, books, and other media for months now. We have the same question and regretfully I believe you have already found the answer. Ramp up the lights slowly and watch your corals they will tell you when it's too much light.

I wish someone could just tell me exactly how to set my AI Prime.. haha

There's a thread on here about AI Prime settings which might be of some use for you.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/ai-prime-settings-and-height.312364/page-2#post-3879374

madducks42 · Jul 13, 2017

Thanks! I've been searching through previous threads but I think I missed that one. I think the current light schedule is okay but I'm not sure how to tell if corals are getting too much light. The branch hammer coral opens up all the way every day and I think it looks good. But I also think the green on it is starting to look more luminescent and I don't know if that's a good or bad thing, lol. Almost every post/article I read on coral health says something like if your coral is doing (insert symptom) then it's getting either too much light or not enough light. Real helpful, lol.

I'm sure we'll take a trip to the LFS in a few weeks so I'll probably take a video of our setup and show them. They seem to be pretty knowledgeable and haven't led us astray so far.