Changing my lighting

[iantower]

Hey guys!

So its time to change up my lighting... I'm switching from 150W to 250W MH. My 150 is about 4in off the surface right now and is on a 12hr day.
I need some help deciding what to do when switching over. How high do I mount the 250? Do I start higher then over time bring it down to around an 8in marker? Do I keep the same time period or switch to an 8hr day?
I dont keep any SPS all my corals are zoas and leathers and LPS.

Well thats about it, thanks for any suggestions guys!
Cheers!
Ian

 

[daleomilla]

I would start by 8 hrs a day and start up higher then lower slowly over time.

 

[shayneh]

What are your tank specs? I always try to keep my lights as high up as possible so that there is less heat transfered to the tank, less crap to clean off the shields, less oxidizing of components etc. A 12 hr day on mh seems excessive to me. Do you have any pc,T5, vho for actinic supplementation?

 

[iantower]

Oh where to start on that lol.. well my tank is a 22in cube lets call it... 22in high 22in wide 22in tall...
The 150MH odyssea comes on little legs and thats what I used... I dont think it really puts out 150 which is why I upped the lighting hours, nothing seems to dislike it to much... really some things (hammerhead coral/frogspawn/devils hand/pretty much all my LPS) are doing fine but are calling for more light and Ihave to keep them at a depth of no more then 10in which is crowding up my upper half if you could imagine and thatswhy I wanted to upgrade to higher lighting so that I could bring them further down the tank column.
Nowone thing I never grasped about all this lighting talk is the tie period. Now Iknow if youwere running 400W MH you would keep them on for probably about 6hrs for peek day sun, 250W maybe 8hrs, 150W well I choose 12hrs... reason? Because I assumed that ifyouhave less lighting pwer that if you arent hitting te coral needs in 8hrs the they have 4 extra hours to get what they need, and this hasn'tproven me wrong yet.
The problem is when I upgrade to 250W I'llbe running what my tank calls for so I'll have to adjust the lighting period so not to bleach the kids. And I'll have to run it higher up as to not overheat the tank. The 150W at just 4in off the surface doesn't do to much harm but Ihear you on salt splash and have to clean it during my weekly water change, no problem now but with thenew light that will change.
i do run 30W of actinic that I have running all day and 15W running at night as a moon light(and to aid in coraline growth).
Well thats about it.
Cheers
Thanks for thereply
Ian