Moving away from blue light, white light looks better

[Falc!]

I find my that i am liking more of a white light these days. I was always in love with dark blue but now i keep changing my lights to more white. I run a hybrid led and t5s

White light just seems more real and corals are lovibg it

I did blue last night for guest to see and i hated it, even though my guest were amazed

 

[exnisstech]

I find my that i am liking more of a white light these days. I was always in love with dark blue but now i keep changing my lights to more white. I run a hybrid led and t5s

White light just seems more real and corals are lovibg it

I did blue last night for guest to see and i hated it, even though my guest were amazed

I'm also running a hybrid T5 / LED. I use the led to give the corals some pop and run two B+ and two C+ T5 bulbs. While not totally white the T5 bulbs I chose definitely make the light much more whiter than it was with just the LED.

 

[BZOFIQ]

Hybrid T5/LED or Pure T5. Voted for whiteish.

Hate the blue, but I only see it in the morning and late at night.

 

[EricR]

I prefer the look of more white but am inexperienced (only 6-7 months since starting soft corals) so I'm sticking with more blue for now just based on everything I've read on here regarding coral vs algae growth, etc.

Following...

 

[gbru316]

Tank starts blue, gradually changes to 10-14k at high noon, then fades back to blue.

I enjoy blue in small doses, but I hate how it washes everything out. 24/7 blue is too much.

 

[hart24601]

It’s often a balance of coral fluorescence vs fish and non-fluorescent coral color. The recent trend to rainbow acros that really pop under all blues and sometimes even filters needed (hate this trend personally) means to get the most out of those one is going to run a very blue tank, in general. If one wants to see fish colors and corals like pink BN or like Oregon tort colors then they will gravitate to white. Of course with modern lighting it’s pretty easy to have blue at night and white during the day, but I lean to white for the fish colors now. I have become jaded with all the ‘new’ acro releases that look boring under even 20k light and need only blues and filters too.

 

[Big Smelly fish]

Not a big fan of blue lighting unless T5’s actinic.
I run 4 t5 actinic for about 12 hours and 10k Mh for 4 hours midday.

 

[Timfish]

As pointed out by Hart24601 a lot depends on the corals. Many fluorescing proteins are excited by wavelengths in the green, yellow, orange and red spectrum so light in those spectrrum is needed for those colors to be seen. For corals using chromoprotiens that are reflecting different wavelengths lighting needs to include the appropriate wavelenghts (pink birdsnest is a good example as it gets it's color by reflecting blue and red light). Too much blue will also cause problems and unfortunately many of the intense colors seen in some systems may be corals trying to deal with excess blue light as fluorescing proteins are being made to be used as antioxidants.

 

[HBtank]

I figured by now most tanks covered a full range of spectrum throughout the day, I picked other since it covers them all.

 

[Kfactor]

i run the reefbrite mh hybrid i run the blue leds in morning for 3 hours then mh comes on from 4 hours then leds for 2 . my mh am running 20k radium bulbs for me it give me just enough blue

 

[NowGlazeIT]

Whites through the day and blues at the end here. I’ve always had trouble growing in all blue, not sure why.

 

[Falc!]

I started running blues on led and on t5s i had 2 b+ and 2 actinics and now im running all channels(blues/whites/green/uv/ect) at same intensities on leds and for t5s i am running only 1 b+, 1 coral+, purple+, and 1 aquablue special. Big difference than beginning but the change was gradual over a few months.

White lights have brought out even more colors on corals even though i heard blues brought out more colors.

Initially my corals looked plain and washed out while transitioning to white but now they look spectacular

 

[homer1475]

Voted Bluish.

I run an 8 bulb powermodule, with 2 LED supplements.

I run 6 blue+, 2 actinic T5's, and use the LED's to mimic purple+ bulbs(modified for more white) during the peak lighting schedule.

 

[rtparty]

It is blue in comparison to the old 6500k halides we ran but it is very white compared to the blue rave party LSD crap people run today

 

[shakacuz]

blue-ish. it is whiter in person.

 

[DIYreefer]

Tank starts blue, gradually changes to 10-14k at high noon, then fades back to blue.

I enjoy blue in small doses, but I hate how it washes everything out. 24/7 blue is too much.

Ditto.

 

[Breadman03]

I'm a fan of 14k for halides. It's white enough, but a bit of blue helps highlight some corals. With LED's, I started sunrise at 20k, shifted to 14k once the tank was waking up, hit a 10K noon, then back to sunset the same way.

 

[Susan Edwards]

I have the RS 160s. I was running 75/11 (down to 75/8 with bad algae). Read that whites do not cause the algae issues and as my par (apex) seems very low, I'm slowly ramping up to 20K--100/50 11 hrs, 1 hour ramp up and down. I have some higher end acros coming and want/need higher par.

Going slow. up to 85/30 now. Will get to 90/40 by Friday and decide if I should get it the rest of the way before next thur, or leave it until corals are here , and then go the rest of the way after another week or 2 with new frags setting in.

I much prefer a whiter system so I think I will like 100/50. So far, no coral complaints!

 

[RedoubtReef]

I find my that i am liking more of a white light these days. I was always in love with dark blue but now i keep changing my lights to more white. I run a hybrid led and t5s

White light just seems more real and corals are lovibg it

I did blue last night for guest to see and i hated it, even though my guest were amazed

Welcome to the light side. Think you'll get some halides?

 

[Falc!]

Welcome to the light side. Think you'll get some halides?

I have thought about halides but all i keep hearing is all the negatives like how hot they get and