Neptune Aquatics

Is my LED lighting killing the RBTAs?

tonggao

tonggao

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I have a 12G nano tank that I fitted with 12 Cree LEDs (6 white and 6 royal blue) with no other lighting, and I always wanted to put a small RBTA in the nano tank. Even though the LED lights look great to people's eyes, I don't think my corals like them very much. Most SPSs I put in there will look great for a couple of weeks and grow well, only to turn brown and very slowly die after that. 8 months past since I first set up the LEDs, and soft corals and a couple LPS finally started growing better, and my green slimer is faithful in keeping its bright green color and actually growing. So I figure it is ready to add my long awaited RBTA. Thanks to Jason (Eight), he gave me a beautiful RBTA of perfect size (not too big, not too small). I put it in at the end of lighting schedule, and it immediately move to a shaded place. Next morning (the light is off until afternoon) it came out with beautiful bubbles and looks very happy. When I came back from work (6 hours after lights turn on), it took me a long time to find it at the bottom of a rock totally deflated. It melt away completely in a couple of days :(. That was very discouraging. After a couple of month, I finally got the courage to try it again. About a week ago, Matt (Reefready) dropped off a nice small RBTA, and I put it at a corner of the tank with mostly shade knowing it might not like it, again at the end of light schedule. It again looked nice and happy. Next morning it still looked happy. But after coming back from work, it is gone, again 6 hours after lights turned on.

I am thinking I might screw it up if it happened once, but twice in exactly the same way, could it be the LED lights? Does anyone else keep RBTA under PURE LED lights? If yes, care to share your experience?
 
How many Watts you running withthose 12 less


I'm playing with 4white 7 blue.... that's 33 Watts n that's on a 14gallon cube
Its seems a Tad strong I've seen three 14g cube ranging from 24-28watts thriving. Well
 
How many Watts you running withthose 12 less


I'm playing with 4white 7 blue.... that's 33 Watts n that's on a 14gallon cube
Its seems a Tad strong I've seen three 14g cube ranging from 24-28watts thriving. Well
 
They are 3w each LEDs, capable of using 36w max. I am using the dimmable driver, and turned it way down from day one, and it is only drawing 25 watts (measured by kill a watt). Given these drivers are not 100% efficient, I assume LED actually get about 20-22 watts of energy.

Tony, I have plenty of caves/shaded areas in the tank, and the RBTAs move pretty fast. I got some low light zoas/LPSs in the tank, and they did not get fried. I am suspecting it is the spectrum instead of light intensity.
 
I am not using any lens since this is on top of 12G Nano. You only need lens when you are trying to penetrate much deeper water. I actually fitted LEDs on 5 different tanks (besides this one and a pure white fuge light, all others are royal blue actinic) with total of ~75 Cree LEDs, and I am not using any lens on any tank except the fuge tank even though I bought a bunch. I found there is no need for lens for actinic (they seem to penetrate well even for my 24" 120G tank), and lens only add trouble (make the beams spotty, and easily falls off when accidentally bumped). Note Cree LEDs has a built in wide angle lens (I forgot the degrees).
 
In the following link there's a lot of information on LEDs. One of the things they talk about it the acclimation period of the light for the animals. They ramp up over weeks to months before full power. Check it out. There are also some great pics of tanks with LEDs only.

http://www.manhattanreefs.com/forum/equipment/70719-leds-good-bad-just-another-addiction.html

-Gregory
 
Hmmm this is making me rethink putting my LED creation over my anemone tank... or my SPS for that matter!

Maybe should test it out over a connected grow out tank or something first :D
 
Hey Tong.
We share the same frustration.
I place any acro in my tank and they turn brown :(
LPS, chalices and zoas look great though.
I do have a RBTA that is very nice looking and grew from a 1" to something like 4 or 5" in a matter of 3 months with no feeding.
When I got it from a BAR member, it was such a cute tiny fella. I wish it kept the size, but it grew so much so fast... lol
I have one monti that was fluorescent before and have no fluorescense now.
My tank is 100% Cree LEDs. Biocube 29 with 24 LEDs.
I recently found out that I have red bugs, so that might have affected the coloration of acros, so I'm planning on treating it with interceptor and after that I'm going to place 1 small acro to watch results.
I'm running my LEDs from 3 to 9pm, but it ramps up and down. At the peak, it runs at 50% cool white and 75% actinic. I've experimented with all sorts of different settings with no really good result. Maybe I'm just too impatient and change it too frequently. :(
 
When did you get the RBTA from Jason? he lost most of his, I wonder if the problem came with yours as well?
 
Tong
I have RBTA in my biocube 14 with 6 white and 6 blues crees. He moved around a little but I think he finally settled in a spot. I found that my green birdnest have in tank browned out but my chalice and zoos grow good.
 
tonggao said:
Gresh, I got the RBTA a couple of months ago, after Jason lost a good number of his nice nems. He said his RBTA did not get affected by the problem though. After the first loss, I was guessing it might be similar to what he experience. But after the second loss, I am thinking it might be something else.
Click to expand...

I suspect it's the same disease. Disease can't tell a color morph even if his weren't effected, the transfer could have opened yours up to it ;)
 
Thanks Gregory for the link.

Mike, that is why I am sharing my experience here. Not to draw any conclusion on anything about LED, but it is so new, I thought it is of some value to share my experience with others, for whatever it is worth.

Thanks Roberto and Dudley for sharing your experience. Good to know that your RBTA is growing well under LEDs, there must be some other reason then. The beauty of this hobby, reasoning by elimination. Anybody has any suggestion on what might cause the RBTA difficulty? I have a bunch of zoas (about 50-80 polyps), a chalice, two favias, 5 toadstools (they drop baby like crazy), a candycane, a undata, a monti digi, green slimer, a 20+ head dendro colony, a sexy shrimp, and a pair of harequin shrimps. since there is no fish in tank, I only feed dendro once a week, and the main nutrient came from star fish as food for the harequins. I run a Remora skimmer on the 12G also, so the water is pretty clean. To avoid chemical war fair, I also have carbon in the back.

Gresh, I got the RBTA a couple of months ago, after Jason lost a good number of his nice nems. He said his RBTA did not get affected by the problem though. After the first loss, I was guessing it might be similar to what he experience. But after the second loss, I am thinking it might be something else.
 
I have some sps under LEDs and 2 types of anemones: RBTA and GBTA.

Anemones do very well. I have 4 RBTAs and 1 GBTA. They are low in the tank, I say 20in from the light.

SPS actually got better color, except for valida which lost darker purple base, it looks pale, but tentacles are bright green. It also could be heat, it was pretty hot for couple of days and I still has my winter light schedule.
 
zepplock said:
I have some sps under LEDs and 2 types of anemones: RBTA and GBTA.

Anemones do very well. I have 4 RBTAs and 1 GBTA. They are low in the tank, I say 20in from the light.

SPS actually got better color, except for valida which lost darker purple base, it looks pale, but tentacles are bright green. It also could be heat, it was pretty hot for couple of days and I still has my winter light schedule.
Click to expand...

What is your photoperiod and color temps? My LEDs are arriving today and I'm trying to get some baseline to begin using them.

-Gregory
 
GDawson said:
zepplock said:
I have actinics (470nm ones I think) for 14h and white ones are for 8. Switching to 6 for summer time.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing that heat is not an issue, so why the change from 8 to 6?

-Gregory
Click to expand...

I have a fairly small office room with lots of computers and other equipment. It gets really hot there during the day. We also try to minimize the amount of AC since it's not very good for newborns. My room can be 10+ degrees hotter than the other rooms. So during summer I move the main lights to start earlier. Right now the whites start at 5am and turn off at 11. I run actinics just for looks for the rest of the day, they are only 36w I think.
 
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