I don't think they would die from the lack of light unless you keep them only under actinic or something with a very low par because you said you had them very close to the light. Probably something else was killing them. They are quite tough.

Most of them like linear flow rather then turbulent.

In my case since I have 4 T5HO but 2 of them are actinic, I would say it's pretty much like a 2 bulb setup that would have a good PAR.

Thanks for the info Snappy. They sure look nice......I will have to find a spot to put one!!

i have 1 k1 and a k2 as my flow. i had them in front of each and only inches from the light. i wonder if it was something in my water but i have no idea what.

Maybe too much flow. Mine are doing very well in low to moderate flow, but nothing strong. what type of T5 do you have? actinic? 10k? what else?

ati blue plus and ati aquablue special hagen glo

I think that should be enough. If you think about it, I have about the same as you since my other 2 tubes are just actinic. I think the aquablue special is 12k if I remember well and that's what I have with a fiji purple.

My guess is that something else is going on in your tank, maybe too high temperature? Gorgonians usualy don't like too hot temperature. Do you have a refractometer to mesure your salinity or do you use a plastic tingy hydrometer? Do you have an automatic top off or do you top off manualy once in a while?

Temp is 77-79 because i have macro algae. During the summer heat I put ice water bottles in the tank to help cool it down. It really works. I have a refractometer. Salinity stays steady at 1.024 (yes the refractometer has been calibrated). I top off manually every 3 days, sometimes i dont have to do it for a week because there is very little evaporation. Since putting on a screen over my tank evaporation has cut down considerably so top off isint very much at all.

why is that? I have macro algae as well and the temp is 75F in one tank and 76F in the other.

That temperature should not kill gorgonians though but if it rise too much it could. Topping off every 3 days might make things fluctuate. I am more thinking now about your parameters being responsible rather than the light.

I was doing a lot of research for macro algae tanks and all the research I did had tanks at on or around 77.
I test my tank water frequently and params are allways the same... except a while ago when people told me to add prazi pro to my system. The bottle and everything said is was ok so i did it and it killed off my pod population, I had an ammonia spike, etc..... ANYWAY that was long after my gorgs died.
All my other corals are doing fine. My candycane is splitting like crazy.

Interesting. I used prazipro recently for my copperband and did 2 treatments. Nothing was killed. I soooo wish it would have killed those amphipods in my tank but nope...all the pods survived like champion. Nothing was affected except my xenias shriveled a bit but they survived.

all my snails, shrimps, feather dusters, bristle worms, bristle stars and even my flame scallop were 100% fine.

If you had ammonia skipe, then it was probably caused by something else because from my experience prazipro does not kill invertebrates, nor coral, and definitly not the nitrifying bacterias. It did cut down my copperband appetite for a while, but that returned to normal after the medication was removed.

I am pretty sure there was something else very wrong with your tank than prazipro. I would not hesitate to use it again in my reef.