[yumseyo]

Hello All, I just had the opportunity to raise the lighting level to 760 watts from my 430 watt unit. I had a Hamilton 175 x 2 mh and 2x40 actinics and got a Odyessa 2x250 mh and 4x65 cfo actinics set up. I have a 55 gallon salt that I would like to convert to a reef or some combination of one. It mostly has mushrooms and some zoos (they seem to love the light!), bunch of live rock and yellow star polyps. I did notice that when I first added the new lighting the mushrooms started to shrink down. So I decreased the amount of time I am running the MH's (from 8 hrs to 4 hrs) and they seem to be getting more comfortable. Any words of wisdom or should I have not even made the change. My Hamilton unit was in need of 2x40 actinics and one capacitor, so I weighed out the price opportunity (125.00 to replace the bulbs and cap to 200.00 for the odyessa unit)

[pogodzib]

Too much light is very rarely an issue, but corals can get shocked by a sudden increase in light intensity. Lowing the lighting duration for a few days and then gradually increasing the duration over the course of 1-2 weeks helps some. A better way is to filter the lighting using 2-3 layers of plastic window screen and remove 1 layer per week until it is all removed.