Why red in my LED lights?

[Steven Garland]

But honestly,I feel like halides worked so good no matter the spectrum nobody questioned it until leds became useable and now its a huge debate on what colors can be used ect ect.

Do you need it ?! Not really. Can you use it in small amount and be beneficial ? Yes it can be. But that's why people use good high cri whites like neutral and warms that have a good amount of red and green. Making rendition of corals amazing.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

But honestly,I feel like halides worked so good no matter the spectrum nobody questioned it until leds became useable and now its a huge debate on what colors can be used ect ect.

Do you need it ?! Not really. Can you use it in small amount and be beneficial ? Yes it can be. But that's why people use good high cri whites like neutral and warms that have a good amount of red and green. Making rendition of corals amazing.

Science keeps saying you do need it.


I agree though. There is a lot more talk than needed. Basically you can grow coral with any 56k bulb with enough intensity.

I personally have also had issue with some Led not growing anything even with the right intensity. It was “blue” and “white”.
So no. You can’t just grow coral with “blue”.
Both JBJ btw.

 

[Steven Garland]

I think spectrum will be a huge debate until the end of time personally. Everyone has their own opinions on what will work and what won't. I have always just used royals,violets 400-430nm and true blues as my base and thrown in a few neutrals,cyans,violets and true blues which maxed out at x% for x amount of time thru the day but mainly ran blues/violets as my main source of light and never had a issue.

Besides my peaks times which was fairly short maybe 2-3 hours a day,I really only used whites to take pics and never had a issue growing any coral. That's just my experience,everyone is different.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

I think spectrum will be a huge debate until the end of time personally. Everyone has their own opinions on what will work and what won't. I have always just used royals,violets 400-430nm and true blues as my base and thrown in a few neutrals,cyans,violets and true blues which maxed out at x% for x amount of time thru the day but mainly ran blues/violets as my main source of light and never had a issue.

Besides my peaks times which was fairly short maybe 2-3 hours a day,I really only used whites to take pics and never had a issue growing any coral. That's just my experience,everyone is different.

An interesting experiment is to grab one of those hand held student spectrometers (and sunglasses ) and look at the spectrum produced. Although it may be blue , you might be surprised at waht esle is in there.

For me , with the jbj, it was what wasn’t in there. Particularly the white side.

 

[jda]

The hell with science, nature says that you need it (and science backs this up). I am old school and believe that nature is always correct until unequivocally proven wrong. Most everything that gets collected in this hobby is on one-breath and in a depth that allows UV to IR to penetrate to that level - there is no doubt that they corals are getting red in nature and assuming or thinking that in a strongest-survival scenario that they waste any energy is foolish. Then, you add in that there is some scientific proof that it is necessary... this is a slam dunk to use some.

I would love to know which vendors only use blue or violet - I know of none, but I do not know them all. All that I can think of either use mercury based lights or LEDs nearly (or completely) at 100% on all channels. ...anyway, I think that it is a fools errand to compare a shop/vendor approach to a hobbyist and that the most successful hobbyists study other hobbyists.

I gotta think that people who have had any success without using red really did have the spectrum and just did not understand that their lights had it. I have seen people post about Jason Fox only using blues, but his bulbs have a good amount of all spectrum in them being mercury based T5s and just look blue to our eyes (he also runs some halides for a while).

 

[Steven Garland]

I know of a few stores here central florida use just blues on their frag tanks,but use halides,t5 and leds in their grow tanks.

 

[jda]

If you have the ability, can you amend your previous post that says that nearly all vendors grow their stuff in blue and violet only? If we cannot even name one vendor that does, I would hate for somebody to see this and perhaps make a bad decision.

 

[Steven Garland]

LRO AND TSA use all blues on the frag tanks. How would it be a bad decision ? Unless you have used this method or even though about it,like me and probably 100k+ reefers have why try and make something sound so terrible.

Create a Nano-Reef account and look at alllllllllll the build threads where people use just blues,check out Dave Fason's office tank running just blues and mint.

 

[jda]

You said that they use full spectrum on their grow tanks, yet your post before said that most vendors only use blue and violet to grow stuff. Might be good to amend your post to state that two vendors that you know of use blue only to sell corals out of their frag tanks while using full spectrum to grow stuff. This is a big difference to those who can understand it.

 

[Steven Garland]

Grow tanks and frag tanks,2 different systems. I also named 2 places also. Their grows=full spectrum and running hybrids,their frag system=all blues. Does that specify that well enough ?

 

[jda]

I get it. You said something different here... still not one mention of a vendor that grows under all blues and violets with your two mentions growing under full spectrum. Details matter, especially to those who do not know how to weed out the bad stuff.

No problem on not running them,you can grown corals with a spectrum of 400-450nm. What do you think most vendors grow coral under nowadays,but basically all blues/violets.

 

[Steven Garland]

Oh man... apparently you are not reading my post well enough. I'll say it again,LRO and TSA have all blues and violets on their FRAG tanks FRAG TANKS!!! Totally seperate from their farms. Their farms are hybrid systems.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Oh man... apparently you are not reading my post well enough. I'll say it again,LRO and TSA have all blues and violets on their FRAG tanks FRAG TANKS!!! Totally seperate from their farms. Their farms are hybrid systems.

Some led systems like SBreeflight actually contain all the correct wavelengths to grow coral only in the blue. Red included.
It’s why folks note the pink or magenta cast to it. It’s a grow light basically , but with more blue.

Generally why I always say “blue” and “white” as they can be mixed a number of ways. A more correct descriptive would be to describe the blue with the actual Nm range.
Same kinda with the term , “full spectrum”. An ati coral plus is actually full spectrum. As it does contain the full spectrum.
It’s a sales term not s true technical description.
56k daylight is an even full spectrum and most “whites” are actually 8k or so, with the green mixed to taste.

A few of my former lfs in San Diego try the blue only too. With limited sucess however.
ASD however uses t5 and MH now that’s quite warm visually. I suppose I could take my color meter in next time I’m there. I’d wager it’s a true 16-20k.

 

[Steven Garland]

SB does have some really good lights,I wanted to try one out but always went DIY.

Its definitely hit or miss,that is for sure. I have used it with good success,especially when I was keeping Acan's and Zoanthid's.

I have always used 445-450nm royals,475-480 blues,neutral and warm whites (5000k/4500-3000k),400-430nm violets depending on bin and manf. of the diodes.

I love a good mh/t5 combo,I feel like nothing beats the colors you get out of corals.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

SB does have some really good lights,I wanted to try one out but always went DIY.

Its definitely hit or miss,that is for sure. I have used it with good success,especially when I was keeping Acan's and Zoanthid's.

I have always used 445-450nm royals,475-480 blues,neutral and warm whites (5000k/4500-3000k),400-430nm violets depending on bin and manf. of the diodes.

I love a good mh/t5 combo,I feel like nothing beats the colors you get out of corals.

Yea, those are good Nms to play in.

I also think most mh and t5 users use a LOT more light than they think they are. The new trend is to ride the dimmer down cuz leds are “so powerful “, like all apples are sweet imo.

This one is kicking it old school

 

[Steven Garland]

I like to think so too,if I ever felt adventurous I would throw in a cyan and mess with colors. But other than that I really never ran whites but to take pics or for a smidge mid day.

I never needed gobs of par,seeming I keep nano's and pico's huge massive arrays were never needed. But I also only needed a handful of leds to produce 180-220 par in a 8" cube for example.

Now that is some light !! As crazy as it seems,some species LOVE be blasted with a blanket of high par,but in the right spectrum. When is that pic from ?

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

I like to think so too,if I ever felt adventurous I would throw in a cyan and mess with colors. But other than that I really never ran whites but to take pics or for a smidge mid day.

I never needed gobs of par,seeming I keep nano's and pico's huge massive arrays were never needed. But I also only needed a handful of leds to produce 180-220 par in a 8" cube for example.

Now that is some light !! As crazy as it seems,some species LOVE be blasted with a blanket of high par,but in the right spectrum. When is that pic from ?

It’s a random one I found for a talk I gave for a reef club. Just about the range of par corals can take.
I’ve had Xenia at 700 par and frogspawn and toads stool at 300+. It’s actualy quite surprising the range for most corals.

I think you might be quite interested in a small spectrometer. The $16 dollar kind is quite enlightening.

 

[Steven Garland]

But for $16 show accurate can it really be ?

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

But for $16 show accurate can it really be ?

It’s science.
https://m.carolina.com/catalog/deta...MI6bPS_c_X3wIVCzlpCh1apQftEAQYBCABEgIuvfD_BwE
(And my bad, it’s a spectroscope)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_spectrometer


You can also use a Glass prisim. But the levels aren’t marked and laid out For you.

 

[w2inc]

You need red

https://www.advancedaquarist.com/2002/2/aafeature

Thanks for posting that article. I read it kind of quickly yesterday and I felt like I might have missed something so I took another look. Reading it again I noticed that the "Action Spectrum" for zooxanthellae includes red, but the article goes on to say that the other spectrums are able to support it as well.

I wanted more information so I followed up with one of the references.

1. Kinzie, R.A. and T. Hunter, 1987. Effect of light quality on photosynthesis of the reef coral Montipora verrucosa. Mar. Biol., 94:95-109.

The study was interesting. There are some design factors to be considered when viewing the results. Specifically the method used to quantify coral growth and the temperature control of the coral growth tanks. However the findings were that coral (as well as the zooxanthellae) grew just fine in the control group that was restricted to light in the 370-550nm range. If I am reading the article correctly, then coral without any of the red (or even orange) spectrum actually out preformed growth of other groups. (See page 242)

I have been out of the research loop for some time so there may be some obvious thing I have overlooked. I would appreciate any feedback.

https://eurekamag.com/pdf/005/005311959.pdf