Mobile Bay Reef Keepers

Hey guys. I've got a couple of questions. I've noticed that some of my corals look a little puny (hammer for a while though) and the orange Scolymia that I got two weeks ago is losing its color from a beautiful bright orange to a pale one. Some of my corals seemed to have even stopped growing.

Now, today I tested my light with a PAR meter and got 500 middle top, 400's upper middle side to side with drop off to the upper 300's on the ends and the 200's along the entire bottom.

My question is this? Do I have too much light and my corals are burning, or is it too little light? I run 4 T5's with indi reflectors. My water is spot on which I can post if someone wants. The hammer is on the bottom to the side in a lower flow area and the Scoly is on the bottom as well in a little higher flow.

Sure could use some help with this one guys.

Thanks

Wes

really cant answer your question but i am wonder where i can get me a PAR meter to test my lighting? whered you get yours?

Borrowed it from my LFS--with threats of death if anything happened to it

How were the corals acclimated to the light? T5s are notorious for doing much of what you describe if you are not careful. Things that help include good water motion as well as good feeding. While halide can be more intense, especially in certain spots, it doesn't surround the corals like T5s do, which may be a very different situation for them metabolically--at least that is one of the competing theories. Those PAR ranges seem to be common for many tanks that house a number of different corals. Are the corals paling or outright bleaching?

those numbetrs are a lil high but nothin to worry about i agree with Amphiprion
if its mostly lps they like more nutrients in the water, you could have your tank too clean

Well, unfortunately I didn't acclimate them correctly because I was under the wrong impression that I didn't have enough light in my tank. I just put them in where I wanted them. I've since found out from here and other forums that T5's give off plenty of light so it may just be light shock. They seem to be just pale and not bleaching because they still have color, it's just faint.

I've got softies up to SPS. My tank has been dirty, so this morning I took the entire thing down, and reaquascaped it to get better flow behind, through and across my rock (think I did it, + the wife likes the look ) so I don't think it was necessarily nutrients. The more stuff I think about the more I think it is the amount of light. I've got some mushrooms that were given to me and they were huge when I got them, but they shrunk to smaller than a pencil eraser. I fragged them off of the rock they were on and the ones in the shade have gotten very big. Also, they changed from maroon with fluro green to fluro teal with some maroon stripes. That's just one thing I've noticed since I changed bulbs two months ago.

Thanks for all of the help and suggestions.

It may be too intense initially, especially if they weren't acclimated carefully. FWIW, I have ~400 PPFD at the sand bed in my system, though the only coral at the moment is a gorgonian. Seagrass enjoys it, however

Thanks for the info and help Andrew. I will defo start light acclimating anything I put in unless it comes from a high light tank as well.

you need to do it regardless. I got some frags from Andy a while back and he had them under 400W mh I think. I bleached out a bunch of them in my tank. I am running 6 T5 with 4 of them overdriven on an Icecap ballast. I thought they would be fine. The ones I put on the top half of the tank had problems.

(nice par readings)
shrooms will gat smaller with higher light levels and be bigger in low light levels to absorb as much light as possible
( read up on your corals before you get them)
it will help you better know how to acclimate they to there new light situation, also will help with placement in the tank

Actually I do read up on them before I get them, I just never knew I had that much light, so I didn't think I need to light acclimate them.

Won't happen again however--"dunt, dunt, dunt, dunt,......I got the power!"