Feeling STUPID!

[AquaSquid]

Recently bought an aquamedic lighting system. 2x250 MH 2x39 t5 actinic. After waiting 2 weeks on back order it finally arrived. Spent a few hours installing it from the ceilling above the tank. Wow what a difference. I also have a flourescent combo over the tank so my total wattage went to 770 watts(tank is a 75E). This is a jump of @ 5.5 watts/gal to 10.2/gal. I then took a week vacation in mexico leaving the tank in the care of a friend. Top off, feeding etc. When I got back-Disaster. My beautiful purple acro is now an ugly brown shade. Mustard yellow turbinaria,blotchy yellow and brown, green gonioporia dead, carnation coral withered and covered in green/brown algae. On the plus side my small outbreak of cyano on the sand is completely gone and my yellow sarcophyton and red hammer look good. Too much light? or too much too fast? I have shortened up the amount of time the halides are on by 25% and have moved them off the water surface up to 9 inches.
I really want sps and a clam in my tank, will I be ok with this lighting?

[dakar]

The lighting should be fine... it was the 'too much...too fast' that got you. slowly aclimating the tank and critters over to lighting changes is crucial to prevent these disasters... screening seems to be the preferred method... start with a shorter photo period and several layers of the plastic type screening, and remove one layer a week until none and then you can slowly make any changes to the photoperiod you choose.

[lReef lKeeper]

no need to feel stupid, this is a common (but costly) mistake. it is made because of the lack of research done on adding anything to a tank. newbies think that all the questions they ask (usually only about corals or other inverts) are bothersome, but in fact the answers they get are crucial to survival of the corals they want to keep. the only stupid question is the one you don't ask !!

[PurpleAardvark]

I hope I don't sound rude saying this but one of the most commonly done mistake is too take the wattage as the light output. A very simple way to prove this is to take 2 96 watt pc quads and on 150 watt Hqi MH next to each other. The 150 watts MH will blow the 192 watts of PC away. Why is this the lummen (forgive my spelling) output in reality the 150 is 2-3 times more lightout output depening on bulbs. Alot of people lately have also messuring how good a bulb is also by the par which is just how much uv radation is being put out. On you bulbs package or in it wiether it is pc, vho, t-5, ect.. somewhere in there it should say in there what the output in lummens is. If not well that is where the inporters name is and they are trying to hide the where it came from so people like me just can't call direct and order it alot cheaper. So the truth is if you had a pc fixture and switched to mh you didn't just double your light output just your electric bill. With all this said now for the helping part.

Seeing how you have a really nice fixture now (good pick by the way), and you have it raised 9" try raising it to about 14"-16" off the tank lower it each day about 1/2" every other day. Keep the photo period the same as you had before the distance will offset the light difference. I have had to do this for a few people who got new fixtures from me. When you cut the photo period they are still getting shocked by the light because it is alot brighter then what it used to be. Also move all you corals to the bottom of the tank, when you get new corals also place them at the bottom of the tank so they can ajust as well.
Last but not least like it is said up above don't be afraid to ask questions like bobby said we are all here to help. We have all been in your place and maybe we can help not make some of the mistakes we have made.
Anyways as a fellow sps and clam freek light it is a nice piece of equipment it will help you alot along the way. Also post some pics as time goes on so we can see the progress. IMO SPS are the most fun to watch grow.

[Whoyah]

Something to be aware of also, is that some corals will still react poorly to the new light. I acclimated my tank to MH recently using the screen method over a month. My huge thing of xenia didn't take well to them. At this point I think I need to chop it back or risk a melt down. I have a small frag of the same stuff which is going great. I think it was just to much for the huge xenia to handle.

[Whoyah]

Quote from Purple Aardvark:

"Why is this the lummen (forgive my spelling) output in reality the 150 is 2-3 times more lightout output depening on bulbs. Alot of people lately have also messuring how good a bulb is also by the par which is just how much uv radation is being put out."

I agree that watts is not a good unit of measure for determining lighting efficiency. However PAR is a better measurement of light for corals then lumens since the lumen scale has been adjusted to please the the human eye, which makes it heavy in the yellows but low in the blue and reds. PAR only measures light between 400 and 700 nm which is above most of the ultraviolet wave lengths. All of the colors on the PAR scale are tried as equal. A bulb rated high in PAR, typecially is better for coral growth.

[PurpleAardvark]

There is a few flaws to the thought of PAR school. The first would be zoo's, mushrooms, softies, LPS and even some sps don't care about the 400 to 700nm. PAR is a strickly U.S.A. thing, mostly RC, which is why not to many bulb companies use the par scale. Lumans scale yes does have to do with the human eye scale but does go above and below what we can see. Sanjay has done a great job of testing bulbs but has not proven that because a bulb has a high PAR rating your corals will grow faster. To be bluntly honest it has been infurred that the testing maybe be a little onesided or money driven. A good question is the Pheonix 14k bulb and the giesmann bulbs were give to sanjay around the same time. The 14k pheonix is test rated and becomes the new hot bulb for a few months. Were are the test results for the Giesmann megacrome 14.5k, 22.5k Bulbs? What is the par on a pc, t-5, VHO?
After trying the High par low luman phoenix bulbs for 6 months my corals didn't grow as fast as the moderate par high luman ushio. So IMO par is just a trend. 400nm to 700nm is a only a part of the wave length in which corals use to grow.

[DaRkAnGeLs7]

You people need to write a book so people like me can figure this lighting thing out.