Too Much Light?

I have the 24 Premium LED Dimmable retro kit, on a 4.25" x 35" heatsink, with 11 CW and 12RB, 6" from the water in a 40g Breeder. Right now I run the RB at 60 for most of the day and the CW run at 60 as well except for a couple of hours around 1pm they boost up too 100%, just wondering if I ran the RB and CW at 100% for most of the cycle would this be too much light? I Have all softies at the bottom right now, but looking at trying some SPS out.

These are controlled with my ProfiLux, not that this makes a difference.

 

If you bump them up maybe 10% per week and keep a close eye on the corals, you should be able to run 100%. There's really only one way to know for certain and that's to try it, but if you move slowly, you should be fine.

 

plus one to Mr. Bill. I am still running mine new boost kid at 25 percent and only for a few hours!

 

That's what i figured! Thanks Mr. Bill, Karma +

 

maybe not enough, I run close to 36 leds on my 36g and i think it barely fits. I would say 23 leds on your 40g is too few for sps, you can do softies fine as long as you use no optics.

 

Not to take over this thread but let say he gets to 100% power with those LEDs. If you add another coral what % would you need to bump down to?

BTW I'm running 26 Cree 3W on my 29 BioCube, you may need to get more LEDs.

 

why would you power down by dimming to acclimitate new corals? if the corals you have spent a few weeks getting adjusted to the new light in your tank, when you dim the lights for a few weeks your altering your light source again giving much less light than all your other corals just got adjusted too. Even though you can still dim the intensity of your leds i would still keep adjusting the coral by raising it in the tank rather than dim your fixture for a few weeks and slowly increase.

 

It depends what you end up keeping. I think a lot of people have trouble with LEDs initially and misinterpret this as having "too much" light. Really many coral bleach if you sneeze wrong. In other words, they are just sensitive to sudden change in parameters. If I were to run a 40B, with LEDs, if all soft corals and LPS, I think 24 would be fine. If mixed SPS, LPS, with SPS up top, I think 36 would be fine, but if truly SPS dominant, I'd go with more like 48. Also, you always want a little more than you need, in order to dim and get the color to your liking and because LEDs loose intensity over time. So, IMO, I don't even see anything wrong with going more than that, as long as dimable. So, if you really want to keep SPS, you can start out with what you have, but it may not be enough if you really get into SPS IMHO.

 

Each tank is different and heavily dependent on what's inside and what the tank is used to. If it were a new tank and you were asking for suggestions I'd say go with 36 LEDs, but if 24 seems to be keeping your corals just fine then by all means keep it at 24.