Blue light effect

[gareth.hubbarde]

I'm a huge fan of how the tank looks at night under the blue leds in there. My question is would I get the same effect if I left the blue lights on with the daylight ones? Obviously the daylight ones are a lot brighter and frankly over power the blue leds. But would the corals glow because of the blue light? Or is this effect strictly at night time under blues?

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[mcgyvr]

Simply turn them on during the day and see for yourself..


But yes.. You will see "some" fluorescence but it won't be as drastic..

 

[Ron Reefman]

And you should have the blues on during the day anyway as the coral's zooxanthellae uses blue spectrum light for photosynthesis.

 

[mcgyvr]

And humans don't see blue as well so you might think the blue is weaker but in reality its not as weak as you think..

 

[Ron Reefman]

And humans don't see blue as well so you might think the blue is weaker but in reality its not as weak as you think..

+1

In fact, corals and zooxanthellia don't have eyes, so unlike us, they don't see light at all. The blue spectrum is all short wavelength light, where white is a mix from 400nm to 700nm. So the blue spectrum carries more energy (good for the coral). But as mcgyvr says, just because it looks dimmer or less intense to us, doesn't mean it's weaker.

 

[JTL]

Ron,
I remember in the early days of leds detractors would say they are not bright enough to be successful with corals. They neglected to account for the amount of energy that was emitted by the lower nm and their corals did poorly because they were running lights at 100%.