Recent content by MrVu

With it that high you can start at 20%

Looking good. What percentage are you starting them at?

Long spine urchins are completely safe with coral. I had a mixed reef with softies to SPS and they never messed with anything. The long spine urchins are very good at keeping my rock clean and are ninja like in how they go around things. The pincushion urchins however tend to knock things over...

I am currently running my second channel of LED actinics at the lowest setting and slowly ramping up the first channel which is a mix of white and blue LEDs. I just prefer the T5 actinics and other bulb options and will look into mounting some to the side of my LED fixture.

If your tank is 4' long the lights sitting on glass will leave some spots uncovered. I am actually thinking about using LEDs as my main 10K lights and supplementing with T5 actinics. The actinics from my LEDs do not make the corals color like T5s and seem to be too intense to turn up high.

The glass on the top of my tank is very thin. It was bending and all it would take was a quick change of temperature to shatter. The glass around a fish tank is thicker and has even pressure. Lights can be mounted on hangers, brackets mounted to the stand, or brackets mounted to the rims of...

The light are around 8lbs each. You do not want it sitting on glass for long term. Why not just mount them? The dimmer works and if it is slowly acclimated is not a problem.

Yes they will work for any coral. SPS corals have the most light requirements but not a good start for beginners. The issue is that not all corals like a lot of light and will need proper placement and acclimation.

10% is the lowest but is very dim if your tank is deep. The whites seem to be easily accepted by the corals but the actinics are very intense and some of my corals react poorly. To the human eye the actinics seem dim. I am starting my actinics back at 10% and going up 5% each week to see if they...

Lights directly on top. Less than 30% power Lights mounted 7-8" Plenty of power to light a deeper tank at full power but corals closest to the light will need to be acclimated very slowly.

I had mine sitting on the glass until I mounted it and the spread was decent on a 16 inch tall cube. What you have to worry about is the intensity directly under the light. The outer edges were bright enough to support LPS and lower light SPS. I had to turn it down to 20% power on the whites and...

You will not need optics unless your tank is over 30" deep. The standard LEDs have a good spread even without them. I also noticed someone mentioned Ecoxotic. The LEDs on those are not very bright and the ballast is not very reliable.

I have corals which came from T5 systems. I am running the lights at very low just to keep them happy.

CcCapt. How long did it take for your corals to adjust? I have the dimmable model and my SPS and LPS seem to hate the actinics if I turn them up. The softies have no I'll affect. I never had this many issues with MH or T5s.

I have been reefing for 10+ years and had the best success with MH. I just tried LEDs on a new 30g cube build a few months ago and I am still tinkering with light settings and coral placements. A beginner would have easily lost a few corals by now. It was almost set it and forget it with my MH...