Quote:
Originally Posted by BrettDS
I think it’s very unlikely for lights to kill corals rapidly. Corals can survive with no lights for 5 days and even if you blast them with bright lights after that they may be unhappy and the may start to bleach, but it’s unlikely that they would flat out die like you describe. I suspect that there may be more going on here than just the lights.
Especially if the lights were replaced with the same lights and you had them at the same settings as the old ones then there shouldn’t really be a problem there.
I would test your water parameters and do so quickly. Check for ammonia as that can definitely kill things quickly and check the pH and alkalinity check the salinity. If you’re using a cheap hydrometer, maybe get a refractometer to make sure it’s really where you think it is. Go out and buy test kits if you need to. If you’ve done water changes make sure that no chlorine or chloramines in the new water.
As far as the lights go, just set them to a low to medium value and run them 8 hours a day. Setting the lights to 60% instead of 50% or 40% instead of 45% isn’t going to rapidly kill corals. I really think that there is something else going on here. Once you figure out what’s happening and why your corals are dying then you can work on fine tuning the lights.
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I can't imagine I would have ammonia in my water since I have RO DI and check tds pretty regularly. Had my whole system redone last summer at a cost of about $500. Also, we are on well water so don't think I'd have chlorine either. We change out a whole house filter and iron filter regularly.
I have a refractometer that I use with regularity.
My corals are not bleaching, just shrinking. The soft corals don't seem to be bothered in the least.