jamiedogood

I have metal halide lights. I was overdue for new bulbs. I changed them to 150W 14,000K. Now my corals are not expanding like they did before. In particular my fox coral and frogspawn corals. It has been a week since the bulb change. Will they start opening up more with time?

clinto

i had the same problem with the same situation about two weeks ago. I have a torch lps which is very similar to your frogspawn and i moved it to the bottom and it still does not look that hot. I also have some star polyps that open for half the day and close up the last half, but are looking better daily. I would maybe put them lower if they aren't already because i know the fox will prefer a little less light. another thing to consider is your previous bulbs may have been too far past their needed change and the corals may have been stretching to get light. i noticed when i switched from PC to MH most all of my mushrooms and zenia are not nearly as stretched out as they used to be. More light means less work they have to do to absorb the rays so they will look different.

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75 reef side by side w/29 refugium
Maroon clown, kole tang, chromis, colon goby, yellow watchman goby, mandarin goby, firefish, hermits, snails, lots of soft coral, 9 new stony corals, sand sifter star, 8 varieties of macro in fuge. Up and running for since Feb 08.

12 gallon nano reef side by side w/3 gal picotope refugium. Percula clown, lawnmower blenny, a few softies.

unclejed

A good practice I follow is to Change one bulb at a time with about 2-3 weeks between bulbs. I have two power compaqs on my 55 gal. and I will change out one set and 3 weeks later the other. This has worked well, however, when i changed one PC to T5s my giant Toadstool responded by producing more algae and thus would shut down more frequently until it became accustomed to the new light and the the intensity settled down a bit after about a month.