Advice Required for lighting periods

StirCrazy · #1 10-07-2010, 10:32 PM

I don't think saturation was a problem at all, and realy asided from a couple hypotheticle articles based of very old studys (unless there are new studdies I am not aware of) I have never heard of anyone who has had reciding corals due to saturation. my own exparaments showed that after 10 hours of intense lights I didn't benifit in growth from more light, but I didn't get corals reciding either, growth just peeked at 10 hours and I was only waisting power for 12 hours of light.

what I did was actinics turn on 2 hours then the MH come on for 8-10 hours, then the actinics stay on for 2 hours after that.

problem with trying to guess what is going on over the summer is you need to know what your temps did. 99% of the time summer problems are from temp changes.

I would start logging temps. I bought a themomitor that would record the daily high and low values and I would record them ever morning and see what was going on over a month or so.. this is what based my desision to buy a chiller.. my temp was swinging from 78 to 88 (hotter on real hot days.) after the chiller I had a swing from 79 to 81. which produced much better results in the corals.

Steve

globaldesigns · #2 10-07-2010, 10:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by StirCrazy

I don't think saturation was a problem at all, and realy asided from a couple hypotheticle articles based of very old studys (unless there are new studdies I am not aware of) I have never heard of anyone who has had reciding corals due to saturation. my own exparaments showed that after 10 hours of intense lights I didn't benifit in growth from more light, but I didn't get corals reciding either, growth just peeked at 10 hours and I was only waisting power for 12 hours of light.

what I did was actinics turn on 2 hours then the MH come on for 8-10 hours, then the actinics stay on for 2 hours after that.

problem with trying to guess what is going on over the summer is you need to know what your temps did. 99% of the time summer problems are from temp changes.

I would start logging temps. I bought a themomitor that would record the daily high and low values and I would record them ever morning and see what was going on over a month or so.. this is what based my desision to buy a chiller.. my temp was swinging from 78 to 88 (hotter on real hot days.) after the chiller I had a swing from 79 to 81. which produced much better results in the corals.

Steve

Temps have never been a problem as my house is climate controlled. If anything my temp sat at 80 and never really moved day and night, and this also meant my heater never turned on as the pumps, etc did the heating. If anything, now the heater may be used more.

Good advice, I will watch the temps.

Atomikk · #3 10-07-2010, 10:43 PM

this saturation that I spoke of is called photoinhibition..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoinhibition

Trust me, corals can and will receede if there is too much light. I have personally witnessed this.

globaldesigns · #4 10-07-2010, 10:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Atomikk

this saturation that I spoke of is called photoinhibition..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoinhibition

Trust me, corals can and will receede if there is too much light. I have personally witnessed this.

Thanks for the article, I am thinking maybe that was my problem, as Kevin (Red Coral) and I have been scratching our heads as to why. Since all parameters are spot on, I am inclined to think lighting and change things.

MitchM · #5 10-08-2010, 10:00 PM

I actually think that in order to have strong corals, temperature, water movement and lighting need to vary throughout the day.
It's water chemistry that must remain as stable as possible.
Feeding is also an overlooked aspect of keeping corals. They need more than light and chemicals.
I think that by keeping temperature as steady as possible we actually make our corals weaker or more susceptible to injury.
Allelopathy is also another area that many of us overlook. Many of us keep coral "gardens" - a mixture of different types of corals.
We can't see it, but chemical warfare is constantly occurring. There is no method of determining when our activated carbon needs to be changed, and we depend on that carbon to remove those toxins.

Mitch

Aquattro · #6 10-08-2010, 10:09 PM

For photoperiod, I switched down to 6 hours of MH per day, and have better colors than I did with 10 hours. I didn't have any tissue problems with 10, but colors weren't great.
My temps were always all over the place, never an issue either, so I wouldn't worry about temp at all.
Your issues over the summer likely weren't a direct result of lighting, but reducing full intensity can have benefits, such as reducing photoinhibition.
I also keep my T5 actinic on all day, mostly for color. I could turn it off, just don't have any extra pins for my timer

MitchM · #7 10-09-2010, 02:01 PM

I wasn't able to finish my post properly yesterday so...

I'm not saying that I know what went wrong with your corals, but I don't think that lighting was the problem either.
There was an article in Advanced Aquarist that demonstrated how the lighting from a 250W bulb only produced about 60% of the PAR as the sun: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2009/7/aafeature2

Ron Shimek did a study that showed how some corals do best at trapping foods at a water velocity of 15cm/sec. How many of us measure actual water velocity?

There are many factors that we do not measure that could be resulting in the demise of our corals.

Mitch