Coral dying?

P

phaux

[I'm only running 2 48" fluorescents, so the other day I decided to swap one of the bulbs to pure actinic and increased the hours the lights are on from 7 to 9 thinking this would help the corals. Now my elongated xenia has shrunk to about 15% of its original size, there are pretty much no stalks on the coral now, it's simply arms shrunk against the rock. I also have a rather large green mushroom that has shrunk to half of it's size. Would this be caused by the increase of light?]
 
[If you are running two 48" vho (hopefuly vho) that is only 220 watts of light. That was probably just enough light to keep them going. By changing one of them to an actinic light you really cut down the par level and the spectrum they needed. You need to put back to a daylight bulb and everything will probably return to normal.]
 
[No it's not VHO it's fluorescent. It's all been growing fine for the last month until I changed to actinic. The xenia looks like crap but the candy cane has nearly boubled in size in the last day alone from the extra light.]
 
[How is it extra light? From what you have said its 80 watts of light. And if one them is an actinic bulb then that would be less light than if they were both sunlight bulbs. I am just saying that corals need light and probably more than that. I have 2-65 watt power compacts in my refugium and I am barely able to keep xenia alive in that.]
 
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