T-5HO bleached my Hydnophona GRRR!!

Well ginea pig I am. There is nothing like spending $400 to kill your favorite coral. Even the frag died. Just so everone knows 5.7WPG of T-5HO is too much light. This coral grew happily in DIRECT sunlight and normalily driven T-5HO but the overdriven T-5HOs were too much. I think I over did it. My zoo didn't like that much light and they were 14" away from it.
I have rolled back my light to just 4x80W T-5HO. Now around 4.2WPG things seem happier now. I just got a new hammer and brain coral and didn't want to fry them. I there is a silver lining in all of this I now have enough left over equipment to set up that BTA/clownfish breeder I was thinking about. That and with only 4 bulbs I have less heat, use less electricity and the bulb replacement cost is only like $80 a year. Didn't want to lose that coral though.

 

Bummer ! :-[ That is an SPS coral right? I would not have thought you could get too much light on that!

 

That sucks. At least you know your sweet spot with wpg now. :-/

 

As luck would have it I started my tank with the glass tops on so I didn't have any worries. By the time I pulled the lids six months later everything was able to handle the neary 5 watts per gallon I was throwing at it.

You want to get blown away get a Helios Superblue T5 strip lamp. They can't keep the things in stock. I would take it over a URI Actinic any day. commodityaxis.com has a few in stock but you will have to contact them to order one, they aren't listed on the website yet.

 

Thanks guys. Heah matt I finally got a digital camera that can take some decent pic so keep a eye out for the 3reef 6 pack!

 

Cool! Look forward to it! 8)

 

I just finally got the hood back on the tank with the 14K 250 DE watt halides. The lamps haven't burnt in yet but I went ahead and took a PAR measurment to compare the 250's to my T5 system. Halides are about 4" further up than the T5's were. The halide lamps are about 7" above the water. PAR measurment on sandbed approx 18" below water surface 94 UMOL's. The 6 x 80 Ice Cap T5 system with 3 Blueplus lamps, 2 Aquablues and 1 Daylight produced 145 UMOL's measured in the sand.

Granted I am running these halides on electronic ballasts but dam those T5 numbers are impressive. The 80 watt lamps are overdriven about 25% on the Ice Cap, the 54 watt lamps are overdriven better than 40%! I can't imagine how you managed to burn a coral

 

Did you acclimate the coral to the new lights by placing window screen over the tank or shortening the photo period? Chances are the light wasn't too much, it was just too big of a change all at once. Most corals can adapt to a huge variety of light, but they have to be acclimated to it over a course of days. (or longer for really big changes!)