New Lights - 2 questions

[Sea Serpent]

Hi All:
#1: I have just purchased new MH lights and will be hanging them this weekend (2 250, 2 VHO actinics). The hood has a piece of plexiglass - will the plexi be OK with the heat? Is there a GOOD way to break in the lights? a few hours at a time? The hood will be on a pully so I can lower them slowly jover time to acclimate the softies that are now in the tank.
#2: I will be adding some sps to the tank in a few weeks and have heard that if they are not acclimated correctly they will suffer. I have not been able to find much on acclimation procedures for sps corals - I have Eric Bornman's book and cannot find any references to "acclimation of sps corals".
Any help that you can give me would be appreciated.
Sea Serpent

 

[6_line]

Hi
Good questions, i don't have many answers. I'm currently acclimating my corals from being in my old 55 (upgraded from 4-110watt VHO) to my new 90 with 2x250 watt Iwasaki and 2-110 VHO. I'm running my lights about 3 hours a day and every other day I'll increase it 15-30 minutes. I'm not for sure if that's the proper way--there is no guidelines except from other's experiences.
Also, as far as adapting new sps to your tank, I would imagine a major factor would be what type of intensity of lighting did the coral come from. If it came from a similiar lighting arrangement, I don't believe a drawn out acclimation time would be indicated. OTOH, if the coral had been under less light, then perhaps so.
I need some of this info as well.
HTH

 

[Anonymous]

I went from 6 NO fluorscents to 2-400W MH on my 100. I started at 4 hrs of light per day and increased it one hour a week. I didn't have any loss or "light blindness". All corals were happy. They included: aleopora, open brain, hammer, shrooms, sarco, cabbage, bubble, and yellow polyps. Seems like there was more but it crashed 6 months ago and that is all I can remember right now. HTH

 

[machinistX]

SEA,
The plexiglass may melt as the halides get very hot. I think you are supposed to run the halides for 100 hours to burn them in.Always place the coral low in the tank and move it up slowly. Hope this helps. Joe

 

[Starmstr]

When ramping up an upgrade you need to compare the jump in intensity. I would recomend that you start at around 12 inches and no adaptation to your lighting schedual since you have your hood suspended with pullys.

 

[pez]

You would have to get the acrylic very close to your lamps to have it melt in any reasonable manner. I had 2 250 about 3" from acrylic without any problems.

You don't really need to burn the MH lamps in, but you should acclimate your corals, as others have mentioned.

-Tom

 

[AnotherGoldenTeapot]

MH lights do take a few hours to break-in - the color changes a little bit - you'll probably not notice.

The plexiglass is to absorb the UV given off by the bulbs.