New halide bulb - coral retraction?

Hi all - I put a new halide bulb in my light today and all my corals are freaking out a bit. Acan, bubble - even zoas are retracted. I recall some weirdness when I did this last time, but not this much. Same color temp, but I replaced the Coralife 150w HQI 14k with an Ushio. It have only been an hour or so, should I be overly concerned?

 

Thanks. I just raised the pendant about 6" for now. That was a pretty direct response to the light. Amazing.

I like the USHIO. It is one of their new ones.
To be honest, it is not radically different to the eye than the Coralife bulb that came with the Aqualight FWIW.

 

+1 Light shock, the new bulb is putting out more PAR than the previous bulb which may be burning them slightly. Congrats on the new bulb, I've heard the Ushio's are nice.

 

We unfortunately can not see PAR, so it can be radically different even though the color looks the same.

 

Thanks. This is eerie. I've been gone for a few hours, came back and still nothing is open.

I have the new bulb 6 inches higher than the old one (total of 16" off water) and I thought I'd see something open by now. Even my frilly mushrooms are small.

I don't recall seeing this much shock in other tanks I've had, but this one is by far the most shallow with the water only being about 12" deep.

I did some water tests before I left - my pH was 8.2 (light not on that long) and the alk was a bit high at 5.5 meq/L. Nothing major though.

I will do some more tests to rule out other stuff. I still think it is the light, but I want to make sure.

 

Matt how old was the old bulb, was it pretty much at the end of its life? I just changed out all 8 of my florescent bulbs and got pretty much the same reaction from some of my corals, not all but definitely the LPS, it only lasted a day or so but some of them clamped up pretty tight.

 

That is an unknown. I bought this lamp used. The guy said it was only 6 months old, but who knows. He was kind of a jerk, so I would not be surprised if it was older.

I just did some more tests... mag and calcium are a bit low (what else is new) - just got my calcium reagent #2 again so that was my first calcium test on this tank. It was around 330. Mag was about 1200+. I'll bring those up over the next few days.

Ok nitrite is 0, nitrate is <5 ppm.

I think it is safe to say we have serious light shock going on as I don't see anything here with these tests that would explain this..


matt

 

I think your right
did some surfing but Sanjay it seems didnt do any testing with coralife lamps
was hoping to find a PAR comparison between that and the Ushio

my opinion is less damage can be done by having to little light than to much light for the corals you mention above

when I reduced the amount of light my softies got in the transfer to the 4ft from the 5ft (where under 6 x 80 watt T5 and went under 4 x 40 watt T8s ) none of them reacted badly and in fact my shrooms stretched in order to get more of the available light
which I have subsequently made available to them by purchasing a 6 x 54 watt fixture.

also many people people have used light deprivation for 3 - 5 days in order to beat of an algae problem , again without negative effects on corals

so moving to less light seems to be a better option with less chance of shock than increasing the light.

thus in your situation if its possible to increase the height of the new lamp again
I would do so

you where at 10 inches with the coralife
your now at 16 inches with the Ushio

we dont know what the starting PAR differences are between the 2 lamps
I dont know what the fall off rate of PAR is on MH lamps per month ( are 6 month old lamps producing 10% or 50% less PAR than new lamps?)

I would move the lamp to 20 inches above the tank and see if that creates a positive responce from the corals

Steve

 

Thanks all - I just came home and turned the light off (early).

Not sure I can raise the light any higher unless I ironically change it back to the original configuration prior to my mod on the light that lowered it. I might do that tomorrow. Everything in my tank was retracted with the new bulb even just now after 7 hours.

 

Well I am pretty upset, although I raised the light 6" within the first hour and shortened the on time yesterday of the new ushio bulb, my corals look pretty nuked this morning. A fungia that was given to me - that was bruised from travel - then recovered in my tank - looks awful this morning. My shrooms still look nuked, acan looks looks bad.

So my girlfriend asked me if we could put the old coralife light bulb in. I gotta say, I am pretty tempted. I think I can only raise the pendant another 2" to a total of 18" over the water. With the Coralife I had it 10" over the water.

The geek in me is resisting taking out a nice Ushio and putting an old Coralife in, but I really don't know if my coral will make it through the Ushio break in.

I am mad at myself. Although I raised it 6" within the 1st hour, perhaps I should have anticipated this more in such a shallow tank (1' deep or less). I've never had one this shallow before.

What would you do?