Are whites necessary?

Jason Fox is trying to sell your coral. 5 meters people. ...maybe 10. You can take a trip to the pacific and go out with coral collectors and even collect your own - you get a mask, snorkel (if you want it), a bag and some hardware to break off or cut pieces... and a huge list of things that you cannot touch. Has anybody been to MACNA and see the talk from the people who collect coral and/or run the mari facilities? Most of the mari facilities have their corals deeper than where they collect at about 15-20 feet.

If you go to the pacific, you can scuba and collect stuff from deeper, but you will be one of the few. You also are on vacation and willing to spend much more cash. Even then, you will be in clear, open water and won't go down below 100 meters where only blue filters out.

The so called deepwater corals are open to the air a lot during low tide. They don't come from deep water. I am most speaking of acropora here since I don't know where they get the so called deepwater zoas.
Yup! That's it!
Same thing with those "deep water Japanese zoas" etc...

deep water zoas.png



 
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Or can you simply just utilize blue lights?
Whites are quite important for corals because they provide colors of the spectrum that blues only simply can't. Also, blues only look quite dark (for me) and I don't personally really like it.
 
I've been running LED + 4 tube T5 hybrid and I notice that if I run 2 Coral+ T5s with 2 Blue+ T5s my acropora growth rate is faster compared to when running 3 Blue+ with 1 Coral+. Maybe the whiter Coral+ bulb is helping?
 
I setup my schedule so that all the blues ramp up over an hour. Then, 90 minutes later, I ramp up the whites (90 minute ramp). All lights are on for about 5 hours, then the reverse happens. Whites ramp down (90 minute ramp), then 90 minutes later the blues ramp down (one hour ramp).

That gives me periods in the morning and at night where the tank is blue only for viewing, but I have enough white on in the day to make the it nice for fish viewing, etc. I use the longer ramp times because I run a longer (14 hour) schedule to suit my tank viewing habits. I am certain that the amount of white I run during the day is more than most reefers would ever run, but I like my fish too. :D

The ONE thing that makes it super easy for me is that I switched out the LED pucks in my Prime HD lights for Lux Engine pucks. The Lux pucks are designed to kind of use the "Kessil approach" in that the individual LEDs are chosen and configured so that you can't really mess up the spectrum. You could set the channels almost anywhere and know that you're providing the "right" light for your coral. The rest is just dialing it to whatever you want to look at.

My schedule looks like this, FYI.

Screenshot_20210908-095723_myAI.jpg


My channels are mapped to different "colors" than a stock Prime (So don't run it unless you have a Lux puck!), but you can see how my whites ramp up later and down earlier, giving me kind of the best of both worlds.

I run the same lights and schedule on three different tanks. My 30g "display" tank with all LPS and softies, a 10g anemone tank and a 25g frag tank. I just adjust the peak intensities to meet my PAR needs for each tank, but the color mix stays the same.
 
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I setup my schedule so that all the blues ramp up over an hour. Then, 90 minutes later, I ramp up the whites (90 minute ramp). All lights are on for about 5 hours, then the reverse happens. Whites ramp down (90 minute ramp), then 90 minutes later the blues ramp down (one hour ramp).

That gives me periods in the morning and at night where the tank is blue only for viewing, but I have enough white on in the day to make the it nice for fish viewing, etc. I use the longer ramp times because I run a longer (14 hour) schedule to suit my tank viewing habits. I am certain that the amount of white I run during the day is more than most reefers would ever run, but I like my fish too. :D

The ONE thing that makes it super easy for me is that I switched out the LED pucks in my Prime HD lights for Lux Engine pucks. The Lux pucks are designed to kind of use the "Kessil approach" in that the individual LEDs are chosen and configured so that you can't really mess up the spectrum. You could set the channels almost anywhere and know that you're providing the "right" light for your coral. The rest is just dialing it to whatever you want to look at.

My schedule looks like this, FYI.

Screenshot_20210908-095723_myAI.jpg


My channels are mapped to different "colors" than a stock Prime (So don't run it unless you have a Lux puck!), but you can see how my whites ramp up later and down earlier, giving me kind of the best of both worlds.

I run the same lights and schedule on three different tanks. My 30g "display" tank with all LPS and softies, a 10g anemone tank and a 25g frag tank. I just adjust the peak intensities to meet my PAR needs for each tank, but the color mix stays the same.
Would you happen to have photos of this tank?
 
Like to flip the question : are blues necessary ?

Ans: with a true full spectrum light = it's in there
 

IF YOU HAD TO TAKE A REEFING EXAM, WOULD YOU PASS?

  • Yes!

    Votes: 32 45.7%
  • Not yet, but I have one that I want to buy in mind!

    Votes: 9 12.9%
  • No.

    Votes: 26 37.1%
  • Other (please explain).

    Votes: 3 4.3%
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