Blue lights or full spectrum?

[spedly]

I saw something interesting on Twitter the other day. It was a poll question asking whether reefers use blue lights only or whether they use white lights as well.

I have a Evergrow 2080 and run the lights up to 100% blue and 85% white. But that got me to thinking. How do you run your lights?

[Aquattro]

I use a 20k MH bulb, fairly blue. When I ran LED, I ran them at 100% all colors.

In the past though, reefers used anywhere from 6.5k -10k bulbs, supp'ed with actinic for color, and results were always good. I think the real issue is hwat habbyists like to look at. The corals don't care as much. To some degree, color can be affected, but again, to the hobbyist's preferences

[Wheelman76]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

I use a 20k MH bulb, fairly blue. When I ran LED, I ran them at 100% all colors.



In the past though, reefers used anywhere from 6.5k -10k bulbs, supp'ed with actinic for color, and results were always good. I think the real issue is hwat habbyists like to look at. The corals don't care as much. To some degree, color can be affected, but again, to the hobbyist's preferences

I think corals DO care , and very much so which spectrum of light they receive. It's been proven that red LEDs can cause damage to coral tissue if they are turned up to high , as well as many people have reported stressed out corals when running the white channel on their LEDs too high.

Also growth and colour are affected by the spectrums we choose , especially with acropora.

[Aquattro]

I don't agree, mostly. LED too high IMO is too high, too quickly from lesser light. Going from 400w MH to 6 LED units at 100% caused no issues for me.

Coral color is affected, but not sure the coral cares about that, simply adjusting pigments to compensate for spectrum. We choose to go for various colors, based on our preferences.
As for growth, typically I see more growth in SPS with whiter light, but simply due to the fact that whiter is generally more PAR.

[Wheelman76]

I don't have much experience when it comes to LEDs but I've never read of someone running all colours at 100% unless it was just white/blue/royal blues and even then I would think that might be a little hard on Acros with the whites on at 100%. If the LEDs have other colours like reds and cyan or uv LEDs I can't imagine running those at 100% and certainly no manufacturer making LEDs would recommend doing so.

[intarsiabox]

Originally Posted by Wheelman76

I don't have much experience when it comes to LEDs but I've never read of someone running all colours at 100% unless it was just white/blue/royal blues and even then I would think that might be a little hard on Acros with the whites on at 100%. If the LEDs have other colours like reds and cyan or uv LEDs I can't imagine running those at 100% and certainly no manufacturer making LEDs would recommend doing so.

What about such bulbs as the PAR38's that have UV, Reds, etc? They don't have adjustable spectrums yet companies such as Fragbox use them with great success.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by Wheelman76

I don't have much experience when it comes to LEDs but I've never read of someone running all colours at 100% unless it was just white/blue/royal blues and even then I would think that might be a little hard on Acros with the whites on at 100%. If the LEDs have other colours like reds and cyan or uv LEDs I can't imagine running those at 100% and certainly no manufacturer making LEDs would recommend doing so.

Sorry, forgot about this

Yes, I ran AI Sols, so just those three colors, but all at 100%, ramped up from initial 60% over about 5 days. No issues at all with acros or the couple euphyllia that I had.
One thing I noticed with people that had more advanced light systems, they tended to not run any of the additional colors above say, 15%. Maybe some Radion users ran the reds higher, but the Mitras with the greens and yellows, very little of that was used. Would it be bad if they ran at 100%? Maybe, not sure.

[smokinreefer]

I'm gonna venture to guess that brad had great success transitioning his tank to his LEDs at all channels at 100% because he was providing his tank with a comparable light source, 400W MH, a light that not as many people use anymore, but most of us long time sps keepers used to strive for!

I know that my best mixed reef display was a 180 lit with 2 x 400w MH.
And I can tell you this, I could put just about any coral any place in the tank.
Including sps on the sandbed.

Times have changed, and with new technology comes new trends.
Maybe better, maybe not. In some ways yes, and some ways no.

Having said that, I'm looking into a "full" spectrum led solution for my next display.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by smokinreefer

I'm gonna venture to guess that brad had great success transitioning his tank to his LEDs at all channels at 100% because he was providing his tank with a comparable light source, 400W MH, .

Yes, exactly this. LEDs aren't going to suddenly overpower 3 x 400mh, so I was able to hit them with 100% right away.

[Myka]

One thing that I've noticed from running a tank maintenance company is that the corals in the tanks lit with LEDs are more finicky. The T5 lit tanks are just "easier" to make corals happy. There are so many variables, but I can definitely say that for some reason LEDs make it so you have a smaller margin of error, and some corals just don't thrive under LEDs. All my T5 lit tanks I can put pretty much any coral in the tank in an appropriate placing and it will thrive.

Having said that, I find in particular, the LPS corals that we're getting these days compared to 8 or 10 years ago need far less light than they used to. I think this is probably from collectors having to dive deeper these days and the corals originating from deeper depths and less light. For LPS tanks, I like to run all blue bulbs (like Blue Plus, not all actinic lol). LPS really need very little light to thrive. My own SPS tank has 6 T5 bulbs and 3 are white, 2 are blue, and 1 is actinic.