error in light acclimation

First off 3reef had been a great resource thus far. A lot of my questions were able to be answered by just searching and reviewing current threads. I was hoping to get a little personal assistance.

75g with 25g sump. I had a 260 watt PC fixture about 2" off the water. Things were decent but I was really getting drawn into SPS corals. I ended up getting about 6 frags or so from a local here that wanted to give me a boost. I had them all at the top. After about a week my new fixture came in, a 2x 250watt HQI w/ T5 supplement lights total 716 watts. HUGE jump there. I suspended the lights about 16 inches over the tank hoping that would dilute the light enough. I moved everything down to the sand. My plan was to slowly move the fixture down over a period of a few weeks. Things looked great for a day or two. The immediate improvement was my anthea (sp?). It looked GREAT and still does. Everything else has slowly started to decline. All of the SPS are completely or almost completely bleached out. My leather closed up and didn't come out for days at a time. Frogspawn has withered up and has very little extension. I have a clam that has been great. No change whatsoever in the clam. Anthea is outstanding. PH is 8.3 with no measurable ammonia or nitrite. Nitrate is around 10. SG is at 1.024 with calcium around 480. I do not have any other test kits at home. Brands/links of additional kits recommended would be great. What steps can I take to get on the road to recovery? I don't want to lose what was a gift to me.

Only important thing I left out is temps at night are around 79 while during the day it jumps to 82-83 with the lights on.

Thoughts and advice are very welcomed and thanks for reading my massive wall-o-text. ;D

 

What is the light period for the T5 and MH bulbs? Move your frags to the sand and then slowly move them back to where you want them to be. Move up a few inches every 4 to 7 days. Cut back on your light period. Your T5HO alone are far more powerful than the PC were.

 

T5s around 11 hours a day and MHs around 10 hours. Too much?

 

+1

You can also try putting some mesh covering you can get a HD over the top and removing a piece at a time as they acclimate to the new lighting while in the sand bed.

It will take awhile for the corals to recover totally, like weeks.

 

Yes I would cut back to 8 hours on the T5 and 4 hours on the MH. Leave the fixture where it is at for height. Add an hour each week on the T5HO until you are at 10 hours. Use pure actinic bulbs for the T5HO. Do not get the UVL Super Actinic. It is too strong for your corals with the MH. Then add an hour each week to the MH time until you get to 8 hours. Then slowly raise your coral from the sand to the positions you want them.

 

What is recommended as far as timers go? I have really been wanting to get a single unit that I could program different plugs for different times. Is my only option to get multiple individual timers?

 

Yes unless you get a controller.