AI Settings

[reefified]

I have a 120 (4x2x2) tank with 4 AI sol blue units about 11-12" off the water surface. I have 2-mp40's running on reef crest sink/anti sink. All my params are right on target and stable, SG 1.026, Mg 1290, Ca 450 and Alk 9.0. I use seachem reef salt, 10 gallon water change weekly, running NP bio-pellets, Carbon all controlled by an Apex.

Right now I have had the tank set up for 4 months. I have a 40 gal breeder sump, 20 lbs of rubble rock in there, SCW 160 skimmer, probes, heaters, etc. In the main display I have 3 inches or so of the larger argonite sand, 60 lbs or so of Marco rock. I have a reasonable CUC of around 150 misc, crabs and 100 or so crabs, emeralds, cleaner shrimp, pepp. shrimp, fighting conchs, etc. For livestock I have a 2-3" powder blue tang, 3" achilles tang, pair of black clowns, leapord wrasse, Mcoskers flasher wrasse, 6 line wrasse, blue/green chromis, hayashi goby, catalina goby, midas blenny, starry blenny and royal gramma. I have 2 clams, 6 various acans and 10 SPS frags.


I feed 2 times a day with fauna marin pellets and red seaweed in the morning and various frozen foods at night such as cyclops, rods food, etc. I also put about 24 oz. of live copepod/rotifer water from my own culture every other night. My tank is very clean, some may say too clean, but I believe the CUC does a great job keeping things looking good.

Now to my questions, I am running the lights as follows, 6am, 50min ramp up to 40%white, 60% blue, 60% royal, at 11am, ramp all up 10% for an hour and then back down at 1pm (short intense mid-day), at 7pm, all ramp down to a 2% blue, 2% royal night light. I have 30% storm chance per day, max 2 storms per day.

I am struggling to place corals so that they are happy. I know flow and lighting are key and I have plenty of each. I feel like no matter where I place the SPS frags, they lose color, don't have great polyp extension, and don't seem to grow well. I have maybe 2 out of the 4 staying pretty and the others just look dull and sad. I have all acans in the sand, all look healthy and are growing, 2 of them seem to be dull in color though. Is my tank just too "young" for everyone, is my lighting period set up wrong, do I need to move the frags around until they find a happy place, help me out here? What are others setting their lights at and seeing good results? Ideas?

Thanks in advance all!

[reefified]

Come on, no one out there with input on these sweet lights?

[mnml]

Try and lower the intensity of the lights. They are quite strong especially if you have the stock optics. Istarted at 30% and am now at 47% after a month and a half. There's an AI settings thread in this forum where people share their settings. It will give you an idea of what others are running. Nice tank btw

[NatureNerd]

Four months is still a fairly young tank. It would be hard to say if there is a lighting issue. For some SPS's it might take a month or more to settle in to their best color after a major change. Be patient and watch how they respond.

Do you have good PE at night? Ever? If not, IMO, that could indicate stress due to water quality, too much of a change in lighting (too much light too soon), or being bothered by a pest.

My Sol units arrive tomorrow, my ability to answer specific question on them is very limited. I will offer that for my 48"x20"x18" reef tank I ordered three Sol Blues and will have them peak at 40% for a few weeks and will closely monitor results before going higher.