New MH, White Coraline

[badoleross]

:help: I recently (4-5 days ago) upgraded my tank (110 gallon)to MHs 2/250watt w/15000 lamps. While gazing into the tank last night I noticed that about 30% of my coraline has turned stark white. Now, I understand that the light change has killed off that coraline. My question is do I cut back the MHs now and re-introduce them slowly hoping not to have such a kill off or will this simply not matter with coraline in that they do not like the intense lighting and will regrow in time. Calcium,PH, and Alk all all in line

 

[lubeck]

Sorry about the coraline and for going off the subject, but I have a 110 gallon and just upgraded my lighting. How do you like your 15k lamps? I have 10ks and think there a little too white. I want to switch.
My coraline turned white too, and i did acclimate them to the tank. It may cause die off but keep doing your water changes. My coraline after a month or so has begun to come back with a venges,

 

[misfit]

I had similar reaction, not as severe though. I immediatly cut down the time the MH ran How long are you running them. It will bleach out your whole tank. I would cut it down right away. You dont want it to take months to get the coraline back up !

 

[badoleross]

I like the color the lights give off but its hard to describe. It is not bright white light by any means but there is no blue in the light either. I started the lights on just 12 hours a day (bad idea) have cut the light back to about 3-4 hours and plan on increasing that 1 hour per week until I get back up to 12. thats the plan at this point anyway.

 

[lubeck]

can you post some pics with your lights on when you get time?

 

[badoleross]

I will try to get that done tomorrow. I have pics in the camera just need to upload them

 

[misfit]

12 hrs sounds like alot, we run our MH about 6 hrs midday.

 

[symon]

I just upgraded my lights as well,400w 20k. I started them for an hour in the morning and hour at night for the last week, I am slowly increasing them an hour or so a week untill i hit the 6hours a day mark! I can't imagine having them on for 12 hours a day LOL my tank would be dried out! :scared:
I have not had any bleaching yet!

 

[mrdc]

I will be putting my halides in soon and have been concerned on what effect the change will have. After talking to some people, I think I will follow an approach similar to Simon. I have also heard that you may experience algae blooms. I also need to move my corals down and slowly adjust them to the new light.
On a side note, what about the corals that get most of their food from light. Will an hour a day and slowly working up hurt the corals?

 

[misfit]

I started out running mine 4 hrs a day and started to get alittle bleaching in the coraline, them Started more like Simon, 1 hr in morning, 1 hr in afternoon. and worked our way up to 6 hrs. I didnt move any of my corals and everything was O> K> during the transition(about 3 weeks).I was switching from PCs. Remember we are supposed to be similating the sun, 12 hrs of MH is like high noon sun all day. We have our lights on timers that simulate sunrise, midday sun, sunset and moon light. I think doing it this way is most natural for all inhabitants in our tank.

 

[badoleross]

After some reading I have trimmed my MHs back to 3 hours a day right now and will slowy increase the time each week. I will continue to burn my old light hood durning the non MH hours through the day. I am getting some algae on the white coraline but I welcome that with my nitrate being slightly high. The tank has only been set up about 6 weeks and I have yet to get a algae bloom.

 

[badoleross]

Lubeck, here is the tank picture with the 250/15000 MHs

 

[reefiness]

i upgraded to the 250s and nothing happened to my coralline, none of it turned white and the mh have been up since the beginning of january.
and about the Mh color. i am running both of mine as 14000k pheonic DE bulbs and i have not pc actinincs and i think it looks great.

 

[harndog]

i went from 260 w pc to 300 w mh 260 w pc atinics and my corline on the back of the tank bleached about half way down and fell off. now it is back to the top 2 months later and thicker than ever. this is on a 75 gal. it will come back but I only run my mh 6 hours a day start at 9 am with atincs then at 11 the mh come on at 5 mh off atincs until 7 been doing this for 2 months and everything is growing (sps,lps, and all of my softies) It is silly to run mh any longer they are suppose to mimic mid-day sun and even on the equater it is not that intense for 12 hours.

 

[mikeyjer]

This is what I noticed in my tank. I bought some rocks that was already covered with coraline algae. They bleached out in some spots and moving out more under my MH lighting. The guy had'em under VHO lighting. I noticed that the new coraline algae are growing just fine on other rocks without bleaching. I guess it just takes time for them to get used to the new lighting. I belive the bleached spots will get covered with the new coraline algae that's able to withstand the MH's. I had my MH's since November and there's been lots of coraline growth since then. :happyfish

 

[badoleross]

The bleaching of my coraline has stopped since I cut the MHs back to 3 hours a day. I am goint to increase it slowly up to maybe 5-6 hours per day but nothing close to the extream lighting I started at. I have other lighting to light the tank during "off peak" hours.