Lighting Schedule causing coral color loss??

kracer1025 · Nov 9, 2011

I have a 90 Gallon SPS dominated tank. I am currently running 2 250w MH on lumatek ballasts with 2 14.5k Giesemann Megachrome bulbs. I also have 4 48" h.o. T5s on an icecap 660 ballast. currently my t5s are running 1 uvl super actinic 2 ati blue plus, and 1 ati purple plus.
My t5s are ran 12 hours and my mh are ran 6 hours a day. I have had this lighting over my tank for around 1.5 years change my t5s every 6 months and my mh every 9.

Is it possible that this may be too much light for my corals. I have several SPS corals that have almost no color at all, but still have decent polyp extension and seem to be growing ok. I have a red planet the is a light brown and the polyps have turned completly white, I also have an ora valida that is the same color and the polyps have also lost color. My tank parameters have been rock solid every time that I test them and I just cant figure out the problem.

Tank parameters:

Nitrate 0 red sea algae control
p04 0.031 Hanna checker
salt 1.027 ref
ph 7.95 to 8.15 reefkeeper
cal 450 red sea reef foundation
alk 8.5 red sea reef foundation 9.0 api
mag 1495 red sea reef foundation 1400 elos

Some corals in my tank seem to do ok and have really good growth but I just cant seem to get really good coloring out of any of my sps corals everything seems a little pale in color to me. The only thing that I could think of is maybe photo inhibition. I run about half a cup of carbon changed monthly and gfo whenever my p04 seems to creep up a bit. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

coral88 · Nov 9, 2011

Just what I think but I think You get the best color from 4 hrs intense light (all lights on) and 8-10 lower light (main lights off)

kracer1025 · Nov 9, 2011

coral88 said:
Just what I think but I think You get the best color from 4 hrs intense light (all lights on) and 8-10 lower light (main lights off)

Thats kinda what I was thinking. I was thinking of possibly running my tank with just the t5s for about a month and see if I noticed a color change at all.

aquabull · Nov 9, 2011

A day or two t5s only to simulate cloud cover periodically would be good. It's not always blue skies!

coral88 · Nov 9, 2011

I wouldn't change that much. It would be better to cut back slowly. I would cut back one hour a week for the next two weeks. I think that would get you from 6-12 to 4-10 I run mine 4-8. If you cut back too fast you might have some things go brown.

kracer1025 · Nov 9, 2011

coral88 said:
I wouldn't change that much. It would be better to cut back slowly. I would cut back one hour a week for the next two weeks. I think that would get you from 6-12 to 4-10 I run mine 4-8. If you cut back too fast you might have some things go brown.

Sounds like a good plan. I will give that a try and see what happens. Thanks for the replys.

kracer1025 · Nov 9, 2011

aquabull said:
A day or two t5s only to simulate cloud cover periodically would be good. It's not always blue skies!

Very true.

CJO · Nov 10, 2011

It also could be a phosphate problem. Do you have any issues with algae?

CJ

KrautBurner · Nov 10, 2011

my stuff seemed to do the best when I ran my atinics for 12 hours (9-9)
and my 2x250 mh's on two 2 hour cycles (11-1pm, and 5-7pm) I started doing this to counter some algae growth as well as some heat issues.

kracer1025 · Nov 12, 2011

CJO said:
It also could be a phosphate problem. Do you have any issues with algae?

CJ

no algae and my phosphate is .03 or less according to my hanna checker any time it creaps above this I run gfo for a bit to bring it down.

kracer1025 · Nov 12, 2011

KrautBurner said:
my stuff seemed to do the best when I ran my atinics for 12 hours (9-9)
and my 2x250 mh's on two 2 hour cycles (11-1pm, and 5-7pm) I started doing this to counter some algae growth as well as some heat issues.

so you only ran your mh for 4 hours total. I would just think the firing of the mh twice a day would be hard on the ballast and the bulb.

Nuocmam · Nov 12, 2011

IME that is a crazy amount of light over the tank. I have overdriven 6 T5's with IC ballasts over a standard dimension 90 and the PAR on the sandbed was 350s. You only have 4 but also have 500W of MH. If its all sps you should be able to slowly acclimate your acros to this much light. But some you would just have to keep lower in the tank. I also agree with lowering your photoperiod.