Lighting - How much light is right?

[Wes]

i use a hanna meter. i read 0 on the salifert piece of crap.

i don't know of anyone who consistantly gets <.03 in the hanna besides chris.

i do:givebeer:

 

[gnatp2]

Nate have you read these article yet? Here's a quote from part III,

"Having a better knowledge of the environmental factors that make corals healthier can help aquarists grow corals faster and it might help us to understand the care requirements of still difficult species such as Goniopora and Dendronepthya. More importantly, a better understanding of the synergy between water flow speed and lighting intensity can help aquarists make better informed decisions about the equipment they should employ for their aquariums. Coming back to one of the first things I discussed in this article series, aquarists often put much more effort into considerations for lighting than water flow. As you can see from figure 7, if an aquarists provides very high light intensities but fails to deliver an equivalent water flow speed, instead of benefiting it is more likely that their corals will suffer from photoinhibition stress. The excessive lighting equipment will not yield the desired increase in growth rate but instead it will likely cause an increased heat input to the aquarium, increased algae growth and a considerable waste of money and energy. If you take nothing else from this article series just remember that:
The more light a coral receives, the more flow it will need"

What's your flow in your tank like now? Have you increased it as your increasing lighting?

Thanks for the links Paul. Good info about flow there. I have a pretty significant amount of flow in my tank. I think I actually was overdoing it at one point. Currently I'm running 2 tunze 6100's, a sea swirl for my return and 2 hydor korrilas on a seio controller. Those articles make sense about having around 15-20 cm/s of flow which is about what I observe in my tank. But I guess that's a little off topic.

Article 3 had a very interesting graph with PPFD vs flow rates. With my old lighting setup, i was getting around 250 PPFD MAX and around 100-150 PPFD in most places in my tank. Under this lighting scenario, the articles suggested that I was on the lower end of the flow needs.

Under my new lighting setup, I'm getting around 350-500 PPFD in the tank now and am still providing around 15-20 cm/s of flow. ( I haven't done much to measure this except throw some mysis shrimp in the tank and guestimate). From that article, a coral that is receiving 10cm/s of flow would ideally receive 400 PPFD for maximum photosynthesis.

In short, yes I think I have the right amt of flow for the light that I am giving my corals.

I did a search for other articles on MR about low nutrient systems but didn't find anything about how lighting plays a part of that. That's the issue I'd like to discuss here.

Nate

 

[gnatp2]

Nate, I have no idea on the best PPFD levels, IMO this makes very little difference in color as long as you have decent lighting. If this an issue about coral colors I can tell you that the overly yellow 400w EVC 10ks is not helping your situation. 2 actinics is not enough to offset these bulbs. With lighting that strong you will have a lot of coral acclimating to do, and as you know not all corals will respond the same way. This lighting will kind of wash away your colors.

My advice to you would be to copy what works. These are undisputed "best" lighting systems of great tanks. Why reinvent the wheel? Copy what works.

250w 10kXM Icecap ballasts + 2-4 T5 or VHO actinics i.e. Pecan2phat, JBNY, Calireef, lousimustdie etc..(I used BLV's insted of the XM'S)

400w Reeflux 10k Icecap or coralvue ballast + 2-4 actinics. i.e. Tony Acropora, Stan Mucha, MR's current TOTS Twinreef ( I used this lighting for 4 months)

400W Radiums HQI ballast + actinics. There are MANY MANY tanks using this lighting and I never heard one bad thing besides the expense of bulb replacements.

If you can't get color using these lighting systems then lighting is not the issue.

HTH FWIW

Dude, I couldn't agree more with you, which is why I ditched my ballast, reflectors and EVC bulbs and went with option #2. So far I'm happy with the lumenarcs, reeflux bulbs and coralvue ballast. I don't want to say that my corals are looking better until I give it at least 2 weeks under this new setup. We shall see.....

 

[gnatp2]

i do:givebeer:

You win. I'll buy you one at the next frag swap...

Ultralith cheater.

 

[Deanos]

Thanks for the links Paul.

:headache:

 

[gnatp2]

:headache:

Yeah, knew that'd drive you nuts...... Just messing with you.

 

[kimoyo]

I did a search for other articles on MR about low nutrient systems but didn't find anything about how lighting plays a part of that. That's the issue I'd like to discuss here.

Nate you want to take several different very broad topics and combine then into one little package and thats not going to happen here on MR.

A few topics your talking about are how to achieve a low nutrient system in a close environment, how low nutrient systems affect corals, how light affects corals, how corals use that light, coral colors, the list goes on.

It takes a lot of studying to learn and understand the science, so your best bet would be to read articles if your really interested, make posts on other forums also and do a bunch of googling. I've been a member of MR for a while now and I've listened to what others had to say and there are only a few people here who have the background or the interest to go that deep into these subjects. Mainly because you don't need to know all the science to have an awesome tank. Some of the best tank owner's wouldn't have a clue what fluorescence means but still have a tight tank.

If your concerned with colors I wouldn't worry too much about par. I would worry more about filtration and then about the wavelengths of light hitting the tank.

I said this last month and I believe others agree. Don't obsess about your ppfd levels, just make sure you have a good lighting setup with regularly changed bulbs. And like Rich said,

If you can't get color using these lighting systems then lighting is not the issue.

You might want to look elsewhere in the tank, when I said filtration earlier, I didn't mean test your tank with a hanna meter. Filtration is a broad subject, so I have a few questions for you.

Are you still using the same dsb and rocks you had in your system before you joined MR when I delivered my chiller to you?

Not sure if you remember but when I was by you that time I told you to dump the stuff in your fuge area and when you finally did it this year your inorganic phosphate dropped from .08 to .03.

 

[gnatp2]

Nate you want to take several different very broad topics and combine then into one little package and thats not going to happen here on MR.

A few topics your talking about are how to achieve a low nutrient system in a close environment, how low nutrient systems affect corals, how light affects corals, how corals use that light, coral colors, the list goes on.

Don't want to get too off topic here, but MR is full of little bits and pieces of info which you piece together to get a bigger picture of what should/should not go into an aquarium. The issue on this thread should be light and how light intensity (low or high) plays 1 of the many parts to a successful aquarium. For a successful aquarium, every aspect has to be correct. 1 of these aspects is lighting which is what was intended by this thread. I agree that other factors influence this lighting issue as well, 1 of which was pointed out by both you and Deanos in Article 3 of the lighting vs flow series. That article gives a lot of good info on how much lighting should be hitting corals given a specific flow rate.

I said this last month and I believe others agree. Don't obsess about your ppfd levels, just make sure you have a good lighting setup with regularly changed bulbs. And like Rich said...

You and others have been saying "don't worry about PPFD", but why? When I went from my old 400W setup, to my new 400W setup, my PPFD doubled. Again, not saying that it has helped yet, but just saying that it has doubled. If there is any empirical evidence or articles showing why PPFD doesn't matter that much, then pls point them out to me. But so far people have just said "it doesn't matter that much" without any backing.
I couldn't agree more with what Rich said. Which is why I got rid of my old lighting system and went with one that was proven successful. If I still end up having problems, I'll know that I'm barking up the wrong tree. Still too early to determine if it has helped or not. I have seen improvements, but don't want to jump the gun on it.

You might want to look elsewhere in the tank, when I said filtration earlier, I didn't mean test your tank with a hanna meter. Filtration is a broad subject, so I have a few questions for you.

Are you still using the same dsb and rocks you had in your system before you joined MR when I delivered my chiller to you?

My old sump is gone along with the rock and chaeto in there. I now have a clean and empty sump with filter socks, 2 phosban reactors with phosar and carbon. I've had the new sump a little over 2 months now

Now I DO still have the same live rocks and sand (my display tank sandbed is not DSB, just the Fuge was) in my display tank that I've had since I started my system. Don't want to put words in your mouth, but are you saying that this could a prob? Hadn't thought about that at all.

Not sure if you remember but when I was by you that time I told you to dump the stuff in your fuge area and when you finally did it this year your inorganic phosphate dropped from .08 to .03.

Yes. That totally helped. I don't remember you suggesting it but I'm sure you did. Should have done that a LONG LONG time ago.

Paul, after re-reading my post, this may come off as combative. Hopefully you don't take it that way. Just want to challenge a couple things and see what you and others have to say. I respect your opinion highly. This hobby is filled with a lot of assumptions and "I thinks" which have shaky backing. I know we have a LONG way to go and I'm sure everyone has beliefs about reefkeeping that are incorrect and need some challenging (myself included).

Thanks,
Nate

 

[kimoyo]

Nate,

I haven't seen everyone's tank, there are a lot of nice tanks in MR, some have had issues recently, but go see Stan Mucha's tank, twinreef's and kedd's (kedd had some issues but see it just for his rock).

Is there going to be a big difference between icecap or coralvue ballast, are the lumenarcs that much better than the reefoptix, probably not. Hobbyist have done this well with all sort of different lights. Even if your using lumenarcs, the ppfd will be different throughout the tank but thats good. Not all corals act the same way to lights. Some like low lighting while others prefer high lighting and thats where the "green thumb" comes in. Lighting might not be uniform throughout the tank but nutrient levels are. Your asking how much light do I need. Well, corals don't need a lot of light to survive, they may grow slower but they can go on living. Then your asking how do I get those colors, as far as light goes, you need the right spectrum not a certain amount of par.

Did you transfer most of your rock and sand from another tank also? IMO whatever your going to attach your corals to is the most important thing in the tank. Since most people do it to live rock, I think live rock is extremely important. Live rock actually binds phosphates along with other things and sand is just little pieces of live rock. Both also provide surface area for bacteria to colonize. You've exposed your live rock and sand to nutrients for a while and now your putting corals directly on them.

You've changed your lighting and I hope in 2 weeks you see the improvements you were hoping for, but if not, then its probably something else and I'd take a look at the rock and sand.

 

[Ray039]

If you guys don't mind me throwing in my 2 cents ...

We all know that lighting is a very important part of keeping corals. I have tried many different types of lighting starting like everyone else with PC's and going to 250w MH then to T5 then back to MH only this time using 20K bulbs. I've tried it all.

I've found that water stability is just as important as the lighting. Once I added a CA reactor and dialed it in correctly I am having a WAY higher success rate with my corals. You really need to get KH, CA, and MG consistent. I test weekly and the numbers are the same every time I test. When I was dosing with Randy's two part the numbers would fluxuate.

Those three parameters are the key.

 

[gnatp2]

Ok, I think it has been long enough to post my results. Nothing extremely insightful except that my new lighting setup has helped with my colors tremendously. I had always had a problem with purples and blues and the new lighting has really improved those colors.

From the few tanks that I've looked at and tested with a light meter I've found that around 350-500 PPFD seems like the right amount of light to be hitting sps corals. Now this can be achieved with a wide variety of lighting setups and I am not say that everyone s/b going with 400W MH's.

My recommendation is this (which has already been stated in this thread): Find a commonly used setup for your size tank that has proved to be successful and go with that.

Nate

 

[Tim]

Let`s see some before and after pic`s.......