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jonbear

Week 7 of my new to me tank

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jonbear
, 11-02-2010 at 11:46 AM (936 Views)
Well as only a six week veteran of a marine reef I stand humble and much wiser than even one week ago. Battling with nitrates and learning the value of dozing many different things I now have a few happy things in my tank. I will post my adventures for the real seasoned folks to laugh about as time goes on.

My question for today is can there be too much light on a reef aquarium, I only have a few things now, mushrooms, long tentacle anemone, favia coral, group of sun polyps and two clown fish in 125 gallons. I have a lot of live rock.

My light system has a mix of metal halide and blue compact florescents. I keep the blue light on about 14 hours a day and the halides 6 hours. Any suggestions?

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Updated 11-02-2010 at 12:34 PM by melev

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  1. RED's Avatar
    The simple answer is yes... each coral has different light requirements... where you place the corals in relation to the lights will affect their growth, color and if too much light, bleach them... How far from the surface and what watts are the MH... How old are the bulbs? 6 hours is not to long for the MH, 14 hours for the CF might be excessive depending on the watts and the total number of bulbs... Flow is also important to match with placement of corals and light... It is a beautiful dance when all 3 work together... Good luck and enjoy the learning process...
  2. Electrobes's Avatar
    Sure you can have too much light for a tank, but more importantly it's how you acclimate the corals to the light. Everyone has, at some point, used a certain light cycle... and yours isn't too far off the reservation.

    I guess the question that should be asked is how are your corals looking. As someone new to the hobby, like yourself, it's a harder question but will prevent a like of heartache. If possible show some pics, but if not... look for some tell-tale signs of light stress... like "bleaching" incidents (Corals start whitening out).

    Sun polyps won't help you in this matter.. but they are sure pretty!