could use some lighting help

guarda

Reefing newb
Just picked up a 10 month old Cadlights 12g. Stock lighting is 32w total. Two 8W 10,000K whites and two 8W blues. They are T5 and are marked T5HO on them. I also put a 12" 6W stunner blue 453nm

I am not too experienced with lighting at all. In the 2 months I've been into this addiction I've mostly read about livestock so here goes. Since it's about time to change the bulbs, what would you guys buy? I'm not really sure what choices I have. Can I upgrade in any way? I don't have any moonlights but to offset that I keep the blue leds on all the time.

Cheers,
Art
 
You may need to get replacement bulbs from Cadlight.

I can't find any place on the net selling T5 bulbs less then 24 inches/24w.Sorry,you wouldn't be able to upgrade from the 8w bulbs to higher wattage bulb.The ballast wouldn't be able to fire the bulbs up.
 
About 40 bucks shipped for all 4 bulbs from cadlights so it's not that bad but I really wanted to be able to house stylophora in the not too distant future. I'm thinking it might not be enough.

Blue led on all the time and whites on at 9am off at 4PM with lps and shrooms and a wellsophyllia bottom center sound ok?

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That is one of the nicest nanos I seen in awhile!I don't think those low watt T5 will put out enough PAR for SPS corals.
 
reeffreak, if it means anything the bulbs say T5HO :/

seabee, i picked it up from a guy who was getting out of the hobby on Sunday. My tank cracked on Friday so I saved the water, lr, and livestock in buckets. The tank at his house was going on 10 months. Mine was only 2 months old but I started it with 3 yr old lr and 50% of his water. When my tank broke I had lots of pods (even with a mandarin, he never liked to pick off the glass, only off rocks.), and lots of tiny new animals procreating and growing including asterinas, chitin, about 10 stomatella, about 50 spiral white things on my glass, 20 featherdusters and barnacles. Amazing that this stuff started appearing so quickly. Anyway, I used a bit of this 10 month old tank's water. Put in new dry reef sand (estes brand) as per everyone's advice and poured 60% his water with 30% my old water and topped it off with new water. Combined all the lr and corals and put it all in at once since all temps were the same in the buckets and tank and acclimated my mandarin and his clown. Sorry for the lengthy post but that's the history.

My neon zoas in the middle used to be open all the time, now only partially. My xenias are looking very limp and closed or small most of the time. Something isn't right or maybe everything needs a couple of days? The gonioporas on top are doing much better than before and the wellsophyllia is so so, not as green as when I first got it. The pipe organ upper center is opening up well and most of the zoas are looking ok. The mushrooms which are recovering from a wellso attack are only open some of the time. (I went away for 4 days and it fell on them and had a nice meal. The shrooms used to be open all the time and very big. Now they are half the size and usually closed.

I started this thread so I can provide optimal lighting so I can be sure I am not doing anything wrong. I am reading up on lighting strategies but could definitely use some help by all the experienced aquarists here. THANK YOU!

Art
 
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Anytime you move or touch corals, it's not uncommon for them to take several days to get back to normal again. I can't see anything obvious that you did "wrong" that would cause your corals to be unhappy, so I say just give them some time.
 
Even with T5HO's your definitely on the low end for what kind of light you need for SPS. You could always try it but it would not be advised.
 
If you want to try then give it a shot.I haven't seen any PAR results on other sites for such small T5-HO bulbs.I still think the PAR is too low but who knows,right?

You decide,you've done a fantastic job with what you have done already.
 
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