MH acclimation time?

4 days ago i upgraded my BioCube lighting from stock PC lighting to 150watt MH on each tank. I have a 14 and 29 biocube. I started the lights out with a piece of eggcrate on top of the tanks with 5 layers of screen over that, between the lights and the water. Its been four days and i have removed two layers of screen, one every other day. Well, some of my acans dont look the greatest, like they are shrinking. Also some of my zoas look skinny? I was wondering if i should be moving faster in the acclimation process of the MH's?

 

I'm guessing the acans are being overwhelmed rather than underwhelmed, but someone else may want to chime in on that one.

 

i dont have MH but i have read here that you should reduce the time the lights are on each day starting with about 4-5 hrs of on time a day and over a months time bring to 10hrs (or whatever the desired on time is).

 

the tanks still look kinda dim though?

 

Because the output of MH is so different from other lighting it may look dimmer than PC to you. My 250 MH definitely looks dimmer than the PC's I used to have and the T5's I tried, but my SPS sure wouldn't grow under the either two. I would stay on the schedule you are going with. I've never acclimated anything to my lighting and never lost anything to it, so I'm not a huge believer in it. No matter how you do it your corals are going to go through some time that they may look like they're dying, but that's normal.

 

yeah, no reason to rush anything! I was just wondering if i was going at a good pace? thanks Mike. How are your tanks doing?