Radion lighting help

[Mark 2]

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7:09pm
i just added four radion xr30 pro lights to my 240 gallon tank (84x24x24). having trouble loosing coral, running at 50%, blues at 70%, white at 50% and red and green at 35% at the peak. someone please give me some ideas. tank parameters are all good.

 

[BoomCorals]

What light did you use before? Can you post all parameters? Any changes in alk recently? How often do you test alk? Are you dosing or using gfo etc? Any other changes recently?

 

[John3]

I would start with a known good program like the AB+ and see how that goes. The white channels are very strong on these fixtures. The mentioned program I think has the whites around 25% and all the blues and uv maxed out.

Depending on your previous lights strength you may need to run an acclimation mode.

 

[jda]

How long have you been losing stuff?

I would put the old lights back on, wait for everything to stabilize and then start over again maybe using both for a while in an transition period where you phase to the Radions over a few weeks or a month.

Just 4 XR30s are going to cause shadowing trouble for those colonies, but that is nowhere near instant death.

 

[Daniel Waters]

When changing lights, you need to be ultra aware of changes in intensity (par) and spectrum. Ideally, you'd want to try to match both of those to what you were running before, and make changes slowly from there. Even then, changing from T5 to LED or Metal Halide to LED can be a shock to corals even when doing your best to match previous lighting. While a par meter would probably give you a good idea on par levels, matching spectrum is going to be somewhat of a guess at best (unless you have some high dollar equipment and knew your previous lighting spectral graph). However, we can probably make some educated guesses / suggestions for each color channel for your radions based on what you were running before if you share that information as @BoomCorals suggested (i.e. T5, # of bulbs and each type, Metal Halide, wattage and bulbs, or other LED- fixture and settings used on it). Just guessing from what you posted earlier, my inclination is that your white channels are too high (and perhaps the red and green channels are slightly high as well, but concern me less than the white channel settings). The radion SPS AB+ program evolved / created to mimic a known / proven T5 bulb combination and it runs the blue, violet, and UV channels at 100%, but the white, green, and red LED channels are only at 24%. In the interim, I'd recommend reducing your intensity and / or photo period to reduce stress on your corals. Of course, you will want to monitor tank parameters. While we like to focus on lighting, it's very possible that you may have other issues and this lighting change is just the final stress component that started the decline. It can be very frustrating. I know I have certain SPS corals that if I look at them wrong, I swear they can sense it and will start to die just to spite me.

 

[aquaregia]

Curious as to why you abandoned your previous lighting setup. Your tank looked very healthy to me from the posted pics. Something that people seldom mention about the Radion SPS AB+ program used by Reef Wholesale that seems to have become the holy grail for coral growth and coloration, is that those lights are mounted 24inches above water line. I think many people mount their lights much lower and I suspect the lights are just too intense if that is the case. You did not mention your mounting height, but it could be a problem.