How quickly did your 2 part consumption rate increase? How quickly did u ramp the light intensity? Have any idea on the par levels? I watched a macna presentation a while back that said w/ increased light the growth rate of coral would slow down which I assumed would decrease the alk/ca consumption. Maybe that was a bad assumption.
Your macna presentation was from Dana Riddle, and to create photoinhibition you need astounding amounts of light. Additionally, for well over 25 years now people ran significantly higher amounts of light than he has suggested to great success. He talks photoinhibition around 500par, the old MH guys regularly ran over 800+ according to their par meters from way back when, and it only increased growth and color.
A 24" 8 bulb ATI fixiture is 192 watts. An XR30 G4 Pro using AB+ program at 100% intensity is 115-ish watts. And most people run their G4's at half power, which is equivalent to a 2-3 bulb fixture, which everyone would tell you was stupid if you were to try and run that few T5's. Par wise, the g4 should win, but realistically we don't have corals in flat frag tanks with zero shading -- We have them around rocks, and though spread has increased dramatically, it's just not possible to get that level of diffusion from a paltry single or double puck.
I gave it 12 weeks of ramping, and my alk consumption increased 5 fold. I was redoing rockscape and all my SPS were sitting on frag racks while rocks were going through their stages of the uglies. My consumption went from 80mL/day down to 35mL/day, after increasing light slowly over 3 months, my consumption is 150mL/day.
This conversation has an unlimited amount of facets. We can talk par, we can talk watts, we can talk about how a watt isn't a watt, we can talk about Joe Yaullo's 25 year old 20,000g reef at the jersey aquarium where his 1000w MH'd can barely keep corals healthy but his 300w LED's burn corals 6 feet down. THere's literally endless things to say, points, counterpoints, arguments all based on first hand experience, and theoretical arguments to compare them against, wild light vs MH, vs, T5, vs LED... This is the never ending conversation, with all three groups screaming bloody murder and wishing death upon anybody who disagrees with them (check out the threads, the level of offended people get on this subject should warrant psychiatric stay).
