Is my lighting to strong for my Innovative Marine 40 lagoon??

Sump’nFishy · Jun 1, 2024

Hi, I was hoping to get you guys opinions on my situation. I’m running two ai prime 16 hds on my AIO Innovative marine 40g lagoon. The lights are mounted at roughly 9 1/2” from the water line and they run for a period of 14 hours per day (do to work schedule) with 1 hour ramp up and 1 hour ramp down. Tank depth is about 12” from from water line to the bottom glass. As far as coral goes I have mosty softies and lps with the exception of a few sps corals. The sps seem to be fine but I have a couple large zoa colonies that have either browned out or lost color (will post pics) and I have a chalice that has lost color and has started receding and seems to never stay happy no matter where I put it in the tank but my other two chalice are thriving and unfortunately I don’t have access to a par meter where I live. Can these issues be a result of too much intensity or because of my longer photo period? I’ve moved one of the zoa rocks to the bottom but unfortunately the other colony has now spread onto other rocks and is kind of stuck in that spot. Idk guys I’m new to the hobby with only 15 months experience and was just hoping to get some input from some of you more experienced reefers. If need more information about anything I’ll be glad to share it with you. Here are some pics of the tank and the zoas I’m referring to as well as my water parameters and lighting schedule.

Salinity- 35 ppt
Temp- 78
Alk- 9.6
Cal- 450
Mag- 1380
Ph- 8.1
No3- 15ppm
Po4- 0.08

lmk if any other info or pics are needed. Thanks

ryanjohn1 · Jun 2, 2024

Can I ask why 14 hours light schedule. I run 4 hydras for sps and I’m not even running mine that long. Coral really only need 4-6 hours peak for photosynthesis.

Sump’nFishy · Jun 2, 2024

Sure, the thing is, is that I leave for work at 6:30am and don’t return home until 5:30pm. I guess my reasoning behind it is to enjoy the tank as we all like to do. I have been wanting to shorten my schedule and am going to do so slowly. I’ll probably drop it down to 9 or 10 hours

ryanjohn1 · Jun 2, 2024

Sump’nFishy said:
Sure, the thing is, is that I leave for work at 6:30am and don’t return home until 5:30pm. I guess my reasoning behind it is to enjoy the tank as we all like to do. I have been wanting to shorten my schedule and am going to do so slowly. I’ll probably drop it down to 9 or 10 hours

You use the slider on the bottom to put the light on Time to where you want. Mine don’t come on till 945-10 am and go off 8-9 pm. Coral doesn’t care if your lighting schedule matches up with the real world.

Sump’nFishy · Jun 2, 2024

ryanjohn1 said:
Can I ask why 14 hours light schedule. I run 4 hydras for sps and I’m not even running mine that long. Coral really only need 4-6 hours peak for

ryanjohn1 said:
Can I ask why 14 hours light schedule. I run 4 hydras for sps and I’m not even running mine that long. Coral really only need 4-6 hours peak for photosynthesis.

ryanjohn1 said:
You use the slider on the bottom to put the light on Time to where you want. Mine don’t come on till 945-10 am and go off 8-9 pm. Coral doesn’t care if your lighting schedule matches up with the real world.

I’m not trying to match the schedule to the real world. Im just trying to adjust my settings according to what’s best for the selection of coral I have. I feel like I’m blasting them with to much light. I’ve got mostly softies and lps but I do have a few sps that seem to be doing fine but as far as the softies and lps I feel like they could be more colorful. I guess I could just lower the intensity and just sit back and observe the results. Lowering the intensity won’t shock anything in your opinion would it?