Too much light ?

[zibnata]

Is it possible to have too much light ? I had a 55 gallon tank with PC lights and all corals were thriving. I have all LPS corals. I switched over to a 125 gallon and had in total with a bunch of miss matched fixtures 12- 65 watt pc bulbs untill I got a new fixture. the corals were still doing well. I then purchased a Aqualight fixture that has 4- 96 watt actinic and 3- 150 watt HQI. I had 14 k HQI lamps. I didn't acclimate the corals properly because of lack of knowledge. Things started going downhill. Corals seemed to be dying. I then realized it and kept the HQI lamps off for half of the day amd corals started looking beter. A year went by and I replaced all the bulbs. I wanted a brighter look so I replaced the 14 k HQI with 10 K. Corals really went down hill.I went through the acclimation process, only having the HQI's on for a few hours a day. I did that for a couple of months. Most of my polyps died. The large toadstools polyps haven't been out since I put the new fixture in. The mushrooms mostly died. And now the green star polyps wont open up anymore. I have a colt coral that has been about 6 inches for over a year now. Any suggestions ? thanks

 

[db]

It could be too much light for some soft corals. You probably doubled your PAR when you went from 14K to 10K, so it's going to be much more intense on the corals. It might just take them longer to aclimate? I would suggest cutting your photo period way back and see what happens.

 

[zibnata]

thanks

 

[infern0]

Or instead of reducing photo period....add a light filter of some type. I've seen people use window screens...one ontop of another. Slowly remove one a week or so until you are at full light blasting power.

 

[spiked09]

Just throwing this out there but do you have the option to raise the lights? I would think that raising the lights up and keeping a longer duration of lighting might be better. The corals might do better with longer periods of less intense lighting as opposed to shorter periods of highly intense lighting. I could be wrong.