T5/LED - Reefbrite / ATI - Help with settings please

[Blizzahjh]

Hey folks,

Finally starting to add coral to my 150g (250g total volume) build. I am used to using blackbox LED's and this is the first time ive spent some money on quality lighting. Tank is 24" deep. Lights are 10" off the water.

1 - 4ft reefbrite tech
1 - 4ft reefbrite xho (on dimmer through apex)
1 - 6 bulb ati dimmable t5

Right now current stocking is mostly acans and zoa's sitting on the bottom of the tank.

Current settings are :
20%-100% from 8am to 10am on the reefbrite
10am 2nd reefbrite turns on
9pm reefbrite 2 turns off and other starts to dim back to 20%
11pm reefbrite 1 shuts off

Its the ATI T5 im struggling with settings on.
i have my whites on channel 1 which is 2bulb, blues and purple on channel 2.

I was thinking of doing channel 2 - 12pm to 6 or 8pm
0-70%

channel 1 - 1pm to 5pm
0-40%

I checked the Par(seneye) with these intensities and got around 100-125 on the sand which should be alright for softies. Reefbrites in full are around ~50 at sand level.

Any thoughts? Its hard to get a good judge of what the coral wants until i put a lighting schedule out and see how they react.

Thanks,

Josh

 

[2Sunny]

Hi Josh -

First I learned something from Big E a couple years ago. He has amazing corals and runs his T5s undimmed (ie 100%) for 8 hours a day so I've been doing the same for years now. I have 2 ATI 8 bulb Powermodules so thats 16 bulbs total. My tank is 24 inches deep and I get a reading with a Quantum Apogee of about 200 on my sand bed. My suggestion (and I am certain you will get many more) is to run all 6 bulbs for 8 hours straight up with the Techs as well then use the XHOs for a dawn dusk effect. Also the width of effective PAR from your bulbs is limited so having 3 different kinds is not ideal for coral growth. I use a 1:1 combo of Blue+ and Actinic. I would note that Jason Fox grows his premium corals under 4 Actinic T5s with two Reefbrite XHOs on either side.

Are you most interested in coral growth or color of the light and what are your favorite corals you have or plan on getting?

Also I run my blue LEDs at 100% and my whites at 50% for the 8 hour window and then dim the blues for dawn dusk. Just in case you think that that is too much light here's my favorite coral that sits only inches from the LEDs

 

[Blizzahjh]

Awesome, this is the type of answer i was looking to see. When i went full 100% t5 i was getting around 190-220 on the sand floor.

T5 bulbs are
2- blue plus
2- coral plus
1- purple plus
1- actinic

I want a nice balance of coral growth and color. The reefbrites give it a nice viewing "Pop" but t5 seems to give nice coloring in the coral. Hopefully best of both worlds with this setup.
Any thoughts on a different bulb combo for when i replace those? I initially went with 4 bulb types to try and get a broad spectrum.

As of right now i am aiming to have a mixed reef with lots of zoas / acans and couple sps colonies nothing fancy/special. Mostly lps/softies. Tank has pretty good filtration and water volume because its a basement sump build so hopefully i can balance my light and do mixed reef which seems to be hard to do.

 

[2Sunny]

Yeah. It's hard to beat the XHOs for "pop", and I personally think you have the ideal setup.

Ultimately, given how well made and tuned for coral growth most T5 bulbs are I think it comes down to your personal color preference. As I mentioned BigE has awesome colors like in the picture below and he swears by the simple combo of Blue+ and Coral + which I ran for years as well, but in the end I got bored with that color and so decided to take a hint from Jason Fox and run Actinics and high blue LED rather than Coral+ and low LEDs. In the video of his system Jason Fox mentions he uses a "pink" bulb, but I don't know of any "pink" bulbs out there. Maybe just play with 1 more Blue+ and only 1 Coral+ and see if you prefer more or less blue. No matter what be sure and give us a few pics!