Little help?

[613ReefGuy]

Hi all, my nano cube has been set up for awhile now. I replaced the lights to the LED's, and I think its messing up my corals. My acan that i picked up last week already looks dead. and others look bleached. Its the professional LEDs (I think 89 watts total). How can i fix things?

Also I have been using RO water, but my local fish store told me to use DI, I always thought I was getting RO/DI but my water supply store sells only one or the other. What do you all use? I have had another algae breakout since switching to the DI.

Any suggestions?

 

[Marines_Wife]

Im new so maybe I am not as educated as everyone else but if the rest of your corals are doing fine then maybe it was something that wasnt doing that well at the store, also if you have been having problems since you switched water, go back! What are your levels? And maybe your light isnt strong enough?? I am not sure though someone else will chime in

 

[Waddi]

+1 On MW, levels, how much wattage is each individual LED? Did you acclimate your corals to your lights???

 

[irensing]

89W of LEDs should be more than enough for a nano tank, in fact, it sounds like it could be a bit excessive. LEDs may have a much more dim look especially when compared to MHs, but are actually quite intense. I could be wrong about this but Ideally your LED ballast should be dimmable so you can start with a low light level and slowly work it up for proper acclimation.

Generally speaking, LEDs can be very tricky. Each type of LED will have a certain wavelength. If the manfacuter went with a bunch of small cheap LEDs instead of fewer high power top of the line LEDs it probably woulnd't be as effective. Also, the optics that cover the LEDs is critical. I probably wounldn't purchase a ballast that simply has a bunch of exposed LEDs. I would expect there to be some sort of optic lense to diffuse the light so it isn't so directional. I would also make sure the ballast has a few different colors (or wavelengths) to cover the entire specturm of light that is necessary for coral growth. Unfortuatnely I can only speak of this because I'm heavily involved with the design of LED ballasts for many different industries. I have not had a chance to actually have one on a tank so there are probably some people here who can provide insight. From what I can tell Aqua Illuminations seems to make a very great product.

 

[little_fish]

They should be selling RO/DI water, which means the filter has both reverse osmosis and a de-ionizer. Im not sure you could buy just a DI filter, but if that is actually what they have, you need to be getting the RO water.

And it sounds like you didnt light acclimate those corals enough, irensing is right, the LEDS are much more intense that the lights more corals are exposed to and a sudden switch to higher lighting can cause them to retract. But LPS corals are very hardy so they should come back.

 

[Northstar24]

I'm guessing the LED's burned the coral. I would dim them if possible, and reduce your photo period and slowly increase it so that the corals have a chance to get used to the new lights. Keep in mind that LED's will seem dimmer to the human eye than T5's/PC's/MH's but put out WAY more light that us actually usable by the corals. 89 Watts of LED in a biocube is probably overkill

 

[613ReefGuy]

I will check into the water for sure. As for the lights, I have shorten my daylight lights and am going to try to increase the time little by little once things look healthy again. 89 watts is a lot, but JBJ makes them like that. How would you normally acclimate a new coral into your system, so other corals dont suffer?

 

[little_fish]

I would put them in a shady region in the bottom of the tank and slowly bring them out to full light and then slowly move them up to where you want them. I would do this over a minimum of a few weeks, especially for things like SPS corals