LED Light vs Sunlight

[Shep]

I am currently think of setting up a frag tank and was wondering about lighting options. There are two places I could put the tank and one of them would get direct sunlight, I know that sunlight can drive algae growth but that would not really be a problem because I will be putting in very little nutrients. So my questions are, will sunlight grow corals just as well as a LED and what could be some problems? I know it would be impossible to control the amount of light and the intensity of it.

 

[bmoore92]

Not sure if you'll get the colors you want out of the frags since the sun is pretty low on the k scale compared to what most reefers keep.

 

[BryanB]

A lot of large coral growers use sun light in green houses for the fast growth then bring them in and color them up with t5 led or high k halides

 

[hart24601]

As others have said color won't be the same, but that is personal preference too, but if your looking to sell or trade the frags you might not be able to get the color from them people expect. As for growth it really depends, if you have low light corals that are getting hit with direct sun they won't be too happy and will not grow all that fast. Aside from that as long as the light levels are not too high or too low growth is more feeding dependent. The sunlight might make it hard to feed the coral and keep algae down is the only thing I can think of.

 

[knotsmart]

+1 on what everyone says.. think about it in these terms.. in nature when the sun is shining in 5' of water, the coral living in that 5' of water are receiving the "full spectrum" of light , meaning it's receiving, the blue light waves, yellow light waves, red light waves, green, ect.. when you are 60' down the predominant light spectrum that gets down that deep is blue.. all the others are filtered out by the water.. to answer your question, your frag tank is 12" deep and theoretically sitting in a window, so .. IMHO.. as long as you are fragging
Coral that likes 12" of water you're golden.. but if you're trying to grow coral that naturally lives 60 ' down .. it's not going to be happy receiving all the green, red and yellow light from the windows..

I apologize if I'm not using the proper verbiage, hopefully someone else will elaborate and articulate with some sophistication.. where's Randy when you need him?