Avoid These 20 Reef Tank Lighting Pitfalls!

Don't make these 20 saltwater aquarium lighting mistakes! Today, join up with Ryan and Matthew as they go through not only common mistakes reefers make, but also so that you may not have thought about. Have a mistake that didn't make our list? Let us know in the comments below!
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00:00 Introduction
00:16 Selecting What’s Popular, Not What’s Right
01:04 High PAR Can Be Dangerous
02:56 Assuming What Works on a One Inch Frag Will Work on an Colony
04:02 Assuming That Not Dying is the Same as Thriving
05:56 Getting Lost in a Sales Pitch or Brand
06:52 Missing That High Flow and High PAR are Intertwined
07:54 Good Enough is Rarely Good Enough
09:04 Constant Upgrades and Swap Outs
10:33 Missing with the Spectrum
11:31 Assuming You Can Guess the PAR
13:22 Forgetting to Return Your PAR Meter When You’re Done
14:20 Choosing Aesthetics Over Biology
16:53 Assuming One Blue Spectrum is as Good as Another
18:10 Thinking Shadows Don’t Matter
19:23 Changing the Spectrum Throughout the Day
21:00 Creating a Cord Octopus Disaster
22:29 Getting Hung Up on the Perfect PAR
24:09 Missing That Color and Florescence Different Things
26:55 High PAR Feeds Pests as well as Coral
28:53 Not Realizing That UV Can Change The Corals Perceived Color
30:46 Lack of Green, Orange and Red Can Change Florescence
32:25 Not Realizing the Reflectivity of Glass
34:52 Not Understanding Shimmer
36:52 Matthew’s Takeaway
37:20 Ryan’s Takeaway

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[THESHMUPMASTER]

Thanks guys for another great video! I've been doing this for more than 30 years and I never stop learning. Channels like yours are valuable for the hobby so keep doing what you are doing!

I have some thoughts about "shadows" and what that means for a healthy reef. I find it interesting the obsession these days with blanketing your aquarium with light so you get it in every nook and cranny. I mean, the sun is a single point of light in the sky, not a blanket like many of these T5s and strip LED fixtures. Its intensity changes as it moves across the sky throughout the day, creating shadows and shimmer and an imperfect environment. I'm a diver and grew up in South Florida diving on the reefs. So it's kind of sad to me to see that so few people in the hobby seem to like what I would consider the "natural" look of a reef in the ocean. Maybe guys like Julian Sprung are old school I guess and prefer this look. But walk into a place like World Wide Corals and while it's impressive, it reminds me of a rave or something. You have tanks with minimal shimmer and blanketed in blue light to make everything "pop" as much as possible. Clearly Victor at WW knows what he's doing because the results are in front of your eyes to see. But I feel like what we are seeing now isn't what the ocean really looks like, but more of a human curated distortion of it. I'd say a huge percentage of people in this hobby have never had the opportunity to dive on an actual reef, likely because of where they live. I know a lot of reefers here in Florida that have never even gotten in the water! It's wild.

I guess my point is that shadows are a natural thing on reefs in the wild, and I'm ok with that. I gave very little thought to shadows in my current SPS dominant 230 gallon setup in my living room. Places with less light have corals that require less light, places with more light have corals that like a higher par reading. Some corals may not grow as well in this environment, but that's ok. When I scuba dive off Sombrero Reef down in the keys the reef is imperfect. It's in competition with itself and mother nature in a lot of ways. And that to me makes it more interesting. Yes, we want our tanks to be as happy and healthy as possible. But I don't think some of these elements need to be as obsessed over as much as they are. I guess that's my point :D

[CriticalErA]

I have several tanks and different light set ups. On one of my 50 gallon low boys I had a set of AI Hydra's and all of my corals were just getting by. I made several changes trying to pinpoint the issue and finally changed the lights. I went with a reefbreeders photon 48 v2 pro and I am not exaggerating when I tell of my corals reacted positively! all of the polyps popped out!!! After I removed the 2 Hydra 52's I noticed some of the bulbs were blown....so i'm thinking these corals weren't getting the spectrum they needed. I own a PAR meter so I know they had the proper PAR so it had to be the spectrum. I have a bunch of Radions and T5 hybrids as well as reefbrite hybrids but so far I am really digging the photon v2, I'm even thinking of replacing one of my other T5 and AI hybrids with one.

[The_TroyT]

My lighting has changed so much over the years. Years ago I had 4 aquariums all lit by Radions now I have 4 aquariums all lit by Kessils. I am definitely a Kessil fan boy now.

[comment.highlighted]

I kept my Apogee Par meter because I intend on upgrading my lights and getting more tanks 🙂

[TheHemiphil]

I'm going to be using 6 radian xr30 pros on my 260 and 4 vortec mp60, s..I can't wait to start using them

[matthewgrossman]

Thinking of getting back into the hobby. When I had a reef tank before metal halides flanked by two blue spectrum bulbs were the way to go. Two different ballasts. Blue on all day, metal halides on mid morning throughout mid evening. It may not have been perfect but it was pleasing to the eye.

Do LED fixtures age out like halides and fluorescent bulbs did? There was a significant recurring cost with replacing them. Is there no live for halides anymore? Have they been found to be inferior?

[GtcoUC]

Wish more love was given to aquatic life t5 hybrid

[bitcoinsig]

I think some of this is nonsense. For example I make tweaks to the lighting and can notice growth or color improvements within days. Also when we used to run daylight metal halides it was known to boost growth over color, and then we colored them up with radiums and t5's. Some of the best looking tanks, that get great growth, color shift light spectrums during the day. I think whats more of a factor is the type of light you are using for color shifting, if it's able to put out 400 par in warm daylight than it should be fine, but many lights like the radions, have 30+ blue/purple leds and only 4 warm white spectrums, so obviously that will impact the result of the color shift.