250w MH light DOWNGRADE ??

mujtba

mujtba

Member
Okay so I have a 75g tank (48"). I have 2 x 250w MH HQI 14k and 2 x 54w T5 actinics. Light is about 12-13" above water.
I have zoos, rics, leathers, a clam, shrooms, hammer, couple hard corals, some more softies, few SPS corals, anemones, polyps, etc...
I do have a UV glass on top of the bulbs, but sometimes I wonder if the UV coating will run out... ??

so my zoos don't grow at all or even open up so much. look melted sometimes. and my rics open up, but don't seem to ever grow. corals arent so bright colored too... bulbs are kept new and changed regularly.
I believe my lighting is WAYYY TOOO Strong for my corals... I was going to downgrade to the following:
2 x 175w MH bulbs MOGUL
2 x 96w PC lighting kit actinics (36")
Do you think the 2 x 175 set is better for me? I should be able to house 90% of the corals with that wattage, right? Should I make the downgrade to that?

Please advise....
 
teen

teen

Active Member
i dont think you have to much lighting, but the downgrade would still be enough to support pretty much everything. i would say water quality is a better candidate for a problem than the lighting you currently have. maybe a pest like a large worm or something like that. what do you test for?
 
mujtba

mujtba

Member
i dont have any worms or anything... i just remember i used to have the pc orbit extreme: 4 x 130w PC before.. and the corals seemed to grow and open and look real nice.. once i got the MH, the xenias shocked, but other corals seemed fine, except zoos. unless before I had 10k PC and now I have 14k MH... but 250w intense is usually good for SPS only, right???
so the only thing left for me to think is that the HQI 250s are way to intense for what I have.. i duno...
i test for calcium, ph, trates, trites, ammo, and alk. seem okay.
 
teen

teen

Active Member
ive got a 250w over my 30 gallon. i have mostly sps, but i also have zoas, shrooms, and a colt coral, all of which are donig great. im getting some xenia next week and im sure it'll be fine.
 
mujtba

mujtba

Member
all seem fine.. is there anything i should check for, in particular for RICs or ZOOs?? I just cannot seem to keep them well..
 
maxalmon

maxalmon

Active Member
What brand bulbs are you running? Might want to consider keeping the existing lights and go down to a 10k, 250w bulb. The best bulbs for growth are around the 6500k range, but they give off a nasty looking yellow hue, so the 10k is a good in-between.
I'm in the same situation with my sps tank, (pretty much the exact setup as yours) I don't like the color of my corals which I think is to blame on the bulbs (14k hamiltion DE) so I'm going to switch over to 10k ushio's or helios. The hamiltons are just to white and I want something more in the blue range
 
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