Acclimating to new lights

I have a 46 bow with a current usa satellite fixture right now that is a 2x96W PC ficture. I have ordered a new fixture that will be arriving on Friday. I'm going with the Nova Extreme Pro 6x39W T5.

Question is do I need to somehow acclimate the corals to the new lights, or can I just swap fixtures and be good?

I was thinking of maybe starting out with only 2 bulbs for a few days then going to 4 bulbs for a few then all 6. Or I could do shortened photo periods only running the lights for 4 hours a day then 5 the next and so on untill I get to 12 hours a day light.

Opinions? What do you do when switching to new more powerfull lights?

 

I would acclimate from going from Pcs to T5s. I think just having 2 bulbs, then four then all six is a good idea. Just take it slow.

 

Some people move all of their corals down to the bottom and slowly move them back up to where they want them. However, this is not a perfect method as it will not help bottom dwelling corals and it can mess up aquascaping. The 4 hours for a couple days then 5 for a couple works too.

 

using mesh screen works well. You can put about 3 sheets between the light and the tank. Every week take one of the sheets out untill they are gone.

 

I have a adjustable light so I lowered it gradually and started with a shorter light cycle. Like stated above, they are all good ways to acclimate corals.. I went from 72watts of pc's to 150w of MH in a 5.5 gallon tank..

 

I recently went through the same thing. I bought a Nova Extreme Pro T5 6x54W upgrading from a 4x65W PC for my 72g bow. I started out leaving all 6 bulbs on for only 4 hours per day. After 3 days I burned a spot on my toadstool leather. So I cut the lighting way back and had 4 bulbs lit for 5 hours in the middle of the day. Each day I adjusted my timers to add 1 hour of illumination per day. The rest of the time from 9 am to 11 pm I had only 2 bulbs lit.

One cord on your fixture controls two bulbs and the other controls 4. Use timers to control the cycle and allow all 6 bulbs to be lit during a brief time (15 minutes or so) during the transitions to avoid freaking everything out by turning all lights off briefly during the transition.

I added 1 hour per day until all 4 bulbs were lit for 12 hours per day. Then I turned all 6 bulbs on for 1 hour in the middle of the day and started adding one our per day until all 6 were on for 12 hours from 10 am to 10 pm. I have 2 bulbs lit from 9 am to 10 am and from 10 pm to 11 pm.

It took 20 days to complete the adjustment. I'm not sure if I could have gone faster without burning or bleaching anything. As they say, only bad things happen quickly in reefkeeping so I took my time.

If you're interested you can read more here: Paul's Reef: Sunburn

 

Thanks for the info. And thanks thats a nice write up there paul.

 

no prob lightning. Let us know how it goes.