Newbie lighting and coral question

[Bwing602]

Bear with me on this one please! We've had a 50g FOWLER for years, and recently for fun I decided I'd try a couple of coral frags. We've had the same, bog-standard, blue and white LED strip sitting on top for years with no issues. The frags we put in were a GSP, a Zoa, and a frogspawn. All of them looked happy and thriving, until--

The light switch(basic ON/OFF for blues and whites) started failing. I tinkered with it, but it wouldn't keep the white on. So a friend gave us another strip; this one has red, blue, white and green and is much "hotter". Almost immediately the frogspawn and GSP wasn't happy at all. Nothing else had changed, just the light. I tried raising the lights and moving the frags around. Still not happy, I took off the new light and put the old one back on top, having to fiddle with it to keep the whites on, and the GSP was happy and waving again. Finally the old light just died, so last night, wanting something simple like the old warhorse strip-that is to say, on the weak side-I wound up ordering an Orbit Marine. My reasoning-my hope-is that at least I can play with the blankety-blank settings for a change and hopefully keep a frogspawn and GSP happy. From the lights to the sand is 18"; I have the frags sitting at 14". I guess what I'm looking for is whether my instincts are correct, and the new light is just too much for them. Things have to improve with the Orbit Marine, right? Assuming I can tinker and find optimum settings? I guess I just had dumb luck with that old set of no-name lights.

Old lights they loved
New lights they hate(and me too)

Thanks for any thoughts!

 

[Bwing602]

...anyone? I feel so alone!

 

[X-37B]

Something simple and proven would be T5's. They can grow anything.
I do not know anything about the new ones you ordered.
Maybe someone will chime in.

 

[Bwing602]

Something simple and proven would be T5's. They can grow anything.
I do not know anything about the new ones you ordered.
Maybe someone will chime in.

Thanks-I appreciate the reply!

 

[dedragon]

other corals should be good but i would worry about the orbit sustaining the frogspawn in that tank long term, they dont need too much light though, if you already ordered the orbit, you could add a orphek or3 blue for pretty cheap to increase par and color pop in corals and run the orbit on a whiter spectrum to try and balance it out

 

[dedragon]

i use a t5ho and they are great, bulbs are annoying though

 

[Bwing602]

other corals should be good but i would worry about the orbit sustaining the frogspawn in that tank long term, they dont need too much light though, if you already ordered the orbit, you could add a orphek or3 blue for pretty cheap to increase par and color pop in corals and run the orbit on a whiter spectrum to try and balance it out

Great info-thanks!

 

[iMi]

There is a lot of info on lighting here and on the web. Thankfully we now have lots of great options. What are the dimensions of your tank? What other corals do you plan on keeping in the future? Have you considered other equipment you may need to keep them happy like a protein skimmer?

 

[dedragon]

no prob, i actually just ordered the orphek or3 blue to add to my 6 bulb t5 on my 75 gallon tank for extra pop after seeing it in person, i need all that par because i run a mostly sps tank though

 

[X-37B]

I run an OR3 blue plus on my 120 to supplememt my halides.
Quality units. You could use one reef day and one blue plus and grow anything.
One bar is equal to 2 T5's.