IMO - one of the best features of my aquarium is that I have managed to mix different corals that I think do well in my aquarium and that I like. Many say - GSP - is a real plague while many of them are real beauties if you like the slightly more "wild" look and are not fond of the middle-class suburb's well-groomed, divided and perfect gardens.
Another part is the light - I do not like at all to try to bring out cool color effects from fluorescence and completely exclude the reflective colors, at the same time it is important to have a large amount of blue light in its spectra and not completely dazzle the faint fluorescence that many corals have. I want to see both the reflective colors and the fluorescent ones. With the modern T5 fluorescent lamps - that are very much based on individual color peaks that together give a white look (three phosphorous technique) - its easy to get that but with LED technique - its seems nearly impossible at least with the fear to use green and red LED sources that exist among many saltwater aquarists. The three-phosphorous T5 bulbs is mostly built on three peaks in wavelength - blue, green and reed - yes - the same technique as in RGB Led. as i know it - it is only one manufacturer that incorporate RGB diodes in its fixtures and give you possibilities to manage them individually - these are the different GHL Mitras Bar 2. It can be difficult to understand why - as an example - the heavy blue deep actinic variant - still will be seen as rather "white light" even if it only use 8000 K white diodes. Look at this chart - it shows the right spectrum of a deep artinic bar running in 100%. The estimated K is 18 000 - do you actually experience it as 18 000 K? No you do not because if you look at the sensitive curve for the human eye you will only see the spectra inside the curve (yellow line) and it is more around 7000 K than 18 000. But will it looks like an intensive light - not so much because - most of the radiation is outside the sensitivity of the human eye. But this also means that the very weak light sources that your fluorescent corals are have a chance to break through
If we compare with a Daylight bar - all channels at 100 %. Most of the radiation is inside the curve for the human eyes sensitivity. This bar will be seen as very bright - but no chances for week fluorescence to break through
Before - I have run with 1 bar oceanic blue, 1 actinic and 2 deep actinic - this have been the spectra I get
For the moment I have 3 deep actinic and 1 actinic - this spectra 100%
Probably i will change to 4 deep actinic bars
These changes I do is because i want to improve the colours my eye will see. My reef is mature - is more a problem of overgrowing than not growing. I´m still convinced that white diodes have importance for growth but bad growth is not a problem at the moment
Why this rant about light now? Yesterday - i visit a nearby LFS and spot some discosoma mushrooms I had not seen before. They was in a tank with only blue - the interesting thing - according to the seller - was the very beautiful flourishing edge of the mushrooms. Yes it was nice - but the rest of the coral was dark and dull. And $50 for this small stone with around 1 mushrooms. However - i ask him to move the coral to an aquarium with not as heavy blue as it was in the present aquarium. In the new aquarium - it looks OK - and with a little bargaining it went home to me
In my light - this show up
It was a little bit more than a flourishing edge
Some more pictures
Sincerely Lasse
