Light over Chaeto

mkfmedic

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#1
Hey All,

I've been running my mixed reef tank with no major issues or problems. Knock on wood. I decided to give Chaeto a try. I happened to be over at Ron's and he hooked me up with some Chaeto so I brought it home and put it in the refugium section of my sump. I picked up a clip on utility light and put in a 50w LED 5500k bulb that I had which seems to be plenty of light?

Any thoughts if that will be enough or is this one of those things where I just keep an eye on things and adjust as needed. I run a pretty clean system with separate Carbon & GFO reactors along with the usual Skimmer, etc, so I'm not sure if the Chaeto will thrive but want to give it a good chance.

Oh, I know everybody has different thoughts so are we running refugium lights for 24 hours, Opposite DT lighting schedule or 12 hours on, 12 hours off?

Right now I decided to run it opposite that of my DT lighting (Radiong G2's).

Anyway thanks for reading and your thoughts.

Mike
 
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#2
Where did u get the led from? I'm running a phillips 19w 800 lumen 5700k(daylight )on reverse from my DT. It run from midnight to 9am. But I do notice that my ph drops slightly from the time it shuts off till my ati turns on. I have my uv drain back into my fuge to keep tow current, I also rotate the chaeto evry few day . my chaeto gets really dense n trimming it literally once a month .I'm not using the clip fixtute. Instead I have it mounted and I use a recess lighting houseing to direct the beam to the fuge. Without I was getting algae grow where I don't want ..HTH
 

mkfmedic

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#3
The LED light is just a standard bulb meant for track lighting. It was just in my closet so I thought I'd give it a try. It definitely seems bright enough. The panels on either side of my refugium are black acrylic so it isolates the light well.

I have decent flow moving through the sump, but I placed the returns from both of my reactors and pointed them towards the chaeto make sure there was additional flow pointed at the algae.

I'll just play it by ear and see how it goes!


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#4
The LED light is just a standard bulb meant for track lighting. It was just in my closet so I thought I'd give it a try. It definitely seems bright enough. The panels on either side of my refugium are black acrylic so it isolates the light well.

I have decent flow moving through the sump, but I placed the returns from both of my reactors and pointed them towards the chaeto make sure there was additional flow pointed at the algae.

I'll just play it by ear and see how it goes!


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Sent you a pm

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Six2seven

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#6
I use a par 30 bulb from Home Depot. It is a 5500k daylight led bulb. Been using it for over a year now. Works great never any issues.
 
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#8
Same here, I been using that PAR38 bulb from Lowes, I think it was like $38 and the chaeto/caulerpa has been growing like crazy... the light before was the $9 flood light which never grew it but didn't die.. this one runs opposite from the DT and I only did that as I feel it will grow a bit slower that way.. awesome lights.

 

mkfmedic

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#9
An update for my LED 50w equivalent bulb. It is growing the Chateo like crazy. The small ball that Ron hooked me up with is growing has easily doubled in size. It is so cool seeing all the "Bugs" in there too! I'm running it for 16 hours "On" and 8 hours "Off" to just give it some down down time.

Thanks for everyone's thoughts.

Mike
 
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#10
I'm running this b****

180 watts of LEDs. 40 reds a and 20 blues @ 3 watts each. With the way I feed I was pulling out a 5 gal bucket of chaeto every two weeks.
 

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