Hello all,
Been reefing for 7 years now. The first 5 went really good had a 72 bow front with 4 ATI bulbs and grew corals well and easily. Monti caps, birds nest, stylo, and hydnophora were my higher light corals and then I had things like torches, zoas, war coral, green star polyps which all grew well.
Anyways 3 years ago I upgraded the tank to a custom 100 gallon (48“ long x 20” high x 24” wide) and switched to 2 Kessil AP700’s. Watching the BRS par videos And hearing it’s a powerful light I hung them 11.5 inches off the water and started my lights at 15% and from what I remember my corals didn’t look happy like they were getting burned but I have gradually increased the light to 52%. Corals have come and gone but I have never been happy with my growth and color of the corals since upgrading the tank and lights. I am sure it’s been some water chemistry problems and I have really been working on that but I decided to rent a par meter from BRS just to see if I am burning the corals because I loose color on frags I buy within a month or so and they look pale and poor polyp extension, and slow growth. My hydnophora has been slowing dying from the bottom up. A tubbs stellata I purchased as a frag and have up the highest in the tank grew a little at the base then stopped. A The Freak anacropora has paled considerably but is growing slow. A pink birds nest has lost almost all its color but is growing slowly.
My first intuition was my nutrients were too low at zero and I was also told this on the Randy Holmes forum. I tried feeding more, dosing Red Sea aminos, turned skimmer off, stopped and purchased a couple more fish. I only had 4 and bumped it up to 7. Still looking to add more. Still couldn’t get nutrients up so started dosing phos and nitrate. I’ve now had nutrients in the tank for a couple weeks. My water Params are as follows:
Alk - 9 dkh
Cal - 440
Mag - 1350
PH - 8.2
Phosphate - 5 to 25 ppb
Nitrate - 2
Salinity - 35 to 36 ppt
One mistake I have been making is my water change water which is beautiful south Florida natural sea water is 1.8 DKH lower than my tank and I had not been correcting for that. I have since started and doing smaller water changes.
So like I was saying I rented a par meter because of the pale colors figuring I might be over lighting the corals as well and I was shocked to see how low my par numbers were. I know I have the light up high at 11.5 inches but at 46% power I was getting around 200 par average just under the waterline, mid tank was around an average of 135, and on the sand average of 100.
I then tested 60%, 80%, and 100% and will post pictures of my readings below along with what my tank looks like. The highest par I could measure at 100% was 300-315 just under the waterline. I’m the middle of the tank directly under the lights at the waterline I was averaging around 280 again at 100%. Mid tank under the lights was around 180 and sand-bed 150. Does this seem low for these lights?
After all these readings I lowered my lights to 9.75” - 10 ish off the water and will test again tomorrow.
Thanks,
Jason
Been reefing for 7 years now. The first 5 went really good had a 72 bow front with 4 ATI bulbs and grew corals well and easily. Monti caps, birds nest, stylo, and hydnophora were my higher light corals and then I had things like torches, zoas, war coral, green star polyps which all grew well.
Anyways 3 years ago I upgraded the tank to a custom 100 gallon (48“ long x 20” high x 24” wide) and switched to 2 Kessil AP700’s. Watching the BRS par videos And hearing it’s a powerful light I hung them 11.5 inches off the water and started my lights at 15% and from what I remember my corals didn’t look happy like they were getting burned but I have gradually increased the light to 52%. Corals have come and gone but I have never been happy with my growth and color of the corals since upgrading the tank and lights. I am sure it’s been some water chemistry problems and I have really been working on that but I decided to rent a par meter from BRS just to see if I am burning the corals because I loose color on frags I buy within a month or so and they look pale and poor polyp extension, and slow growth. My hydnophora has been slowing dying from the bottom up. A tubbs stellata I purchased as a frag and have up the highest in the tank grew a little at the base then stopped. A The Freak anacropora has paled considerably but is growing slow. A pink birds nest has lost almost all its color but is growing slowly.
My first intuition was my nutrients were too low at zero and I was also told this on the Randy Holmes forum. I tried feeding more, dosing Red Sea aminos, turned skimmer off, stopped and purchased a couple more fish. I only had 4 and bumped it up to 7. Still looking to add more. Still couldn’t get nutrients up so started dosing phos and nitrate. I’ve now had nutrients in the tank for a couple weeks. My water Params are as follows:
Alk - 9 dkh
Cal - 440
Mag - 1350
PH - 8.2
Phosphate - 5 to 25 ppb
Nitrate - 2
Salinity - 35 to 36 ppt
One mistake I have been making is my water change water which is beautiful south Florida natural sea water is 1.8 DKH lower than my tank and I had not been correcting for that. I have since started and doing smaller water changes.
So like I was saying I rented a par meter because of the pale colors figuring I might be over lighting the corals as well and I was shocked to see how low my par numbers were. I know I have the light up high at 11.5 inches but at 46% power I was getting around 200 par average just under the waterline, mid tank was around an average of 135, and on the sand average of 100.
I then tested 60%, 80%, and 100% and will post pictures of my readings below along with what my tank looks like. The highest par I could measure at 100% was 300-315 just under the waterline. I’m the middle of the tank directly under the lights at the waterline I was averaging around 280 again at 100%. Mid tank under the lights was around 180 and sand-bed 150. Does this seem low for these lights?
After all these readings I lowered my lights to 9.75” - 10 ish off the water and will test again tomorrow.
Thanks,
Jason
