So far so good! I am extremely happy with the new lights. I still need to work on a better mounting option but I was able to use my existing brackets that I made for the Ocean Revive lights. I drilled new holes in the brackets and removed the hanger bolts from the reefi lights replacing them with long screws from Ace hardware. I think in the future I am going to buy the 2040 wall mount arms from reefi
https://www.reefi-lab.com/product/2040-wall-mounts/
At the original mounting height of 12" above the water I was getting a ton of light spill in front of the tank so I lowered the lights until I was not getting any more spill which ended up being about 9.5" off the surface of the water.
The Reefi lights are infinitely configurable so I am just using one of the default schedules tweaked. Since I have a mixed reef I wanted to shoot for SPS PAR levels on top with some shady spots and lower light spots on the bottom. All measurements are using an Sq-520 full spectrum USB par sensor on my tablet.
Prior to installing the lights I took several readings under the ocean revive lights. These lights where running 20% on the white channel and 90% on the blue channel. In my mind that's pretty close to maxed out for intensity vs visual appeal. the reading at the highest point in my reef with the OR lights was 191 PAR. Once the reefi lights where installed and height adjusted I started with the default SPS setting and took my initial readings at the lights scheduled peak which is 162 watts. I took a reading at the highest spot of my reef and was getting 450 PAR! Thats more than double the PAR and the lights where not even turned up all the way.
At this point I did not have any SPS on top the rocks and was only working with the low light SPS, LPS, and Zoas I transplanted from my old reef. So had to come up with a lighting plan. The plan I came up with was to lower the power of the lights to match the Ocean revive lights and get a baseline of what my existing corals where used to. Raise the power and adjust them to where I ultimately want them to be 300-350 on top and 150-200 on the bottom. And finally put the lights in acclimation mode so that they would start off approximately where the old lights left off and ramp up over 30 days. This picture is taken under the Ocean Revive lights. The par numbers in red are OR numbers and PAR numbers in Green are Reefi numbers at 122 watts.
I don't have a picture with numbers but to get 350 par at the middle highest point with reefi lights my peak wattage was 152 watts. I used the default SPS setting and dialed each channel at all points back in equal proportions till I got the reading I wanted. The only thing I changed was I tweaked the color a little adding a touch more cool white and lime to get a look I liked. I put the lights in acclimation mode to start at 70% ramping up to 100% in 30 days. With the lights in acclimation mode I was getting around 170 PAR at my highest middle point. Its been 20 days and so far all my LPS are happy. My war corals exhibit PE during the day now and my Duncan is loving life! Here are some pics from last night. un corrected in the SPS photo mode.
They are hard to spot in the pic but I have added some tiny frags. I have never had this happen before but all the SPS frags had polyps out within 30 minutes of being dipped and added to the tank. In the past Acros would grow but I never saw PE unless it was at night or I was feeding. I have added the following frags:
Rainbow delight Acro
Jason Fox Grape Juice Acro
Battle Corals Ponape Rainbow Acro
Rainbow Nasuta Acro
Green BirdsNest
Mystic Sunset Monipora
Bubblegum Monster Chalice
Some other technical notes. I have upgrade my reef-pi to version 3.0 which has some pretty nifty new features. This was a pretty big step for me. I have been running version 2.4 now for sometime and it worked! I was reluctant to update my production pi but the upgrade was smooth and opens me up for future projects like PH monitoring and more power outlets.
Lastly on the husbandry side. The reef is 4 months old so still lots of maturing to go but I am starting to get blood red coraline and tiny spots of purple. I am doing 5 gallon water changes weekly and looks like my alkalinity consumption is pretty steady at .35 dkh a day for the time. I am using reef-pi for dosing and have been going very slow only dosing 10ml of BRS soda ash a day and 5 ml of calcium chloride. I read the article by
@Earl Karl https://www.reef2reef.com/ams/corre...and-nutrients-n-and-p-from-my-experience.738/ and have decided to keep this reef at 9.2 dkh. Due to the fact that I have a running algae scrubber, skimmer, filter sock and a couple hundred pounds of live rock I have always had issues keeping my nutrients up. For this reason I always ran alk on the lower side at 8-8.2 dkh.
I never really had a feeding regime. I always fed a pinch here and a pinch there when I remembered. I have tried dosing nitrate with no luck so decided to measure out my feeding and feed consistently. My algae scrubber is online and growing GHA but its on its lowest light setting (25% intensity) for 10 hours reverse cycle. I took N and P readings yesterday and I am getting 4-5ppm N and .08 P. My feeding schedule looks like this.
Daily
1/4 tsp Newlife spectrum pellets
One large pinch of Newlife spectrum flakes
1/4 tsp coral frenzy
Weekly
One cube frozen
1/4 sheet of nori
With this feeding schedule I am getting more algea on my glass than I like and having to scrap daily sometimes twice daily so I ramped up my scrubber to about 40% and will see how things look after a week or so. My goal is to keep my nutrient levels close to 5-10ppm N and .02-.1 P
And to conclude this update
Here is a shot of my Duncan. Picture was taken with a Canon EOS Rebel T6. The white balance has been corrected with the included software and
@danlu_gt filter from reefi
