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200 gallon tank and corals

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Fishflop View Drop Down
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    Posted: July 31 2015 at 5:04pm
I have a system of about 200 gallons that has been set up for over a year and I'm now (for the last week) been having some
Issues with the corals not opening, losing colors and/or receding. The corals
Range from zoanthids, acans, sps and lps, all are closed up tight and looking not happy at all. The only changes that have been made, which have been in the past 4 weeks, were sand was added (bare bottom
Before) and I went from 6 t5 bulbs that were at least a year old to 2 LED AI sols being over the tank. All levels are in check, the only ones being a slight high were 10 nitrates and .08 phosphate (Red Sea test kits). If anyone has any guesses let me know, I'm getting pretty stressed out over this lol. Thanks!
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Fishflop Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 31 2015 at 5:10pm
A little more info - salinity is 1.025, regular 10-20% water changes, carbon is ran 24/7, g2 skimmer, regugium with cheato.
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Mark Peterson View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Mark Peterson Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 31 2015 at 8:25pm
LED lights and sand all at once? No wonder the coral are pissed. LED lights are notorious for sunburning coral. Set the AI lights at 10% of full intensity. If the Acclimation Schedule was set up, it may still be too bright. LED's are brighter in some wavelengths than they look to the human eye. Year old fluorescent lights are extremely dim. The change in light, wavelength/spectrum and drastic increase in intensity is the major reason for the coral issues. Unfortunately, depending on the amount of damage, the coral will take 1-4 weeks to recover.

The new sand, when introduced to a bare bottom tank was by itself enough change to the tank chemistry. Change enough to cause coral to protect themselves. Not that the chemistry is bad, just that it's a change. Coral have a problem with change. I would turn down the light intensity and give it a week. Hopefully they are not burned too badly. Sunburn can be fatal. Sorry. Unhappy

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Fishflop Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 31 2015 at 9:09pm
The corals had actually been ok with the sand change due to me putting the sand in over 4 days, but I agree completely on the lights. To this day I still wish I had the money to get a light meter for times like this, but the lights were set on 30% when the corals were unhappy so I had changed them to 10% on whites, blues and royals. I've never played with t-bulbs before so I assumed that's what was causing the issues, but thought I'd get a second opinion
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Marcoss Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 31 2015 at 9:15pm
I'm sure Mark is right. LED lighting can be very misleading. I run mine at 40% and it's almost too much.

I am curious on a couple of thins (curious because I like to tinker around with my stuff)

Did your temperature change so much that your corals noticed? I imagine your tank cooled down a bit with the lighting change.

Do change your carbon often? I change mine every 18 days- no real reason but it lines up with my GFO schedule.

My corals recently got pissed and I think it was because (these are out of the tank norm):
Disabled one heater and dropped two degrees
Changed sunrise and sunset due to window covering
Delayed changing carbon and GFO for a few days

I rectified those things and they recovered.

Those are just my experiences though. Obviously yours can be way different.

RedSea Max S400 - 90G Rimless Frag Tanks x2 - 185 Lookdown Bin
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote bstuver Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 31 2015 at 10:01pm
I'm betting on the light as well. You went from 2 year old bulbs which is not a lot of light to LEDs you probably shocked the corals pretty bad.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Schmidty Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 01 2015 at 8:24am
I'm not sure but my AI prime has an acclimation setting where you set what you want you light at during normal operation then you can set the acclimation starting percentage and then the how many days you would like it to acclimate for. Then it will increase the percentage each day so your coral don't get shocked. Maybe the AI Sol has the same thing or maybe the controller?
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Fishflop Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 01 2015 at 10:22am
I'm pretty sure it does, but it's not too much for me to turn it up little by little - day to day =)
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