Can A Blacklight Stimulate Growth?
- Thread starter JCOLE
- Start date
bngowe
New member
blacklight no..
if you really want that "glow" its better to go with moonlights. =)
ever shine moonlight on your corals? gives a pretty nice glow effect.
i mean if you do a DIY moonlight, it shouldn't run you too much. probably be cheaper than a blacklight too. (LED's are relatively cheap).
if you really want that "glow" its better to go with moonlights. =)
ever shine moonlight on your corals? gives a pretty nice glow effect.
i mean if you do a DIY moonlight, it shouldn't run you too much. probably be cheaper than a blacklight too. (LED's are relatively cheap).
speckled trout
New member
The first responder jumped all over him. What is he supposed to do?
Believe it or not, some people don't spend every waking hour on RC. How, then, are we to know if a question's been asked multiple times? Heck, I haven't been on more than a couple times in the last few months. Chances are fairly good that I could repeat a question that was asked during that time period. I guess I deserve to be yelled if I do this then, right?
Actually, I guess I sort of did this by "clicking" on this thread, in the first hand. I wanted to know the answer and didn't know it'd already been asked! Shame on me, I should have researched to see if had already been asked!:rolleye1:
For a UV sterilizer you're talking about UVB to UVC. In a couple of the readings provided, it says that what the blacklight emits light in mostly UVA, which from what I know isn't capable of damage like the others.
I tried using a black light the other night over my tank, and it did make it look a bit cloudy, and really didn't create that cool of an effect. Stuff glowed, but was kind of eerie looking.
Here's something I stumbled across while doing a search online. I guess Steve Tyree has done some research on this subject matter as well. It doesn't say much, but maybe someone has his presentation and can give some input.
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2005/3/media
Whaledriver
New member
I have read that people have success growing frags under actinics only. This is almost a black light but probably has other needed spectrum's. This simulates deep water situations. Some light sensitive frags probably grow in this type of lighting in nature.
IndyReefMan
New member
I was in WalMart today and I saw flourescent black light bulbs manufactured by GE. The packaging listed them as 457nm. This is a longer wavelength than 03 actinic bulbs. If actinic bulbs are safe to run it would seem that these GE bulbs would be too.
swimboy123
Reef-a-holic
light in wattage doesn't really matter. A 150 halide on a 40 inch deep tank probaly isn't going to do squat. Now I'm definitely not the authority on this but I believe what you are looking for is the PAR value that is hitting the corals.
IndyReefMan
New member
Oops... my bad. I mistook 457mm (millimeters in length of the tube) for 457nm (nanometers in wavelength). So, what I thought was telling me the wavelength of the light was really telling me the length of the tube. When I put the BLB's on my tank, the corals flouresced very well but the whole tank looked a little cloudy too.
A lot of people here are saying that they don't think that any UV light put off my black lights would be bad because it is very little.... well I'm sure many of us have seen what UV light from a DE Mh bulb can do when the UV shield falls out, 10 min and stuff starts dying.
In micorbiology we did expirments with bacteria and UV light. That stuff is no joke. 7 min of UV light on some very resilant bacteria and they go down hard. I don't know if black lights put emit UV light or not, but if there were any chance that they did then I would not use them.
In micorbiology we did expirments with bacteria and UV light. That stuff is no joke. 7 min of UV light on some very resilant bacteria and they go down hard. I don't know if black lights put emit UV light or not, but if there were any chance that they did then I would not use them.
philagothos
New member
I actually checked into this topic recently as well. I work 2nd shift, so the search function usually works when I get home. I found several threads where people conjectured, but very little where people had actually done the work to find out. I did find a guy on another forum (can't even remember which one now) who set up a nice little experiment. His basic findings were that there was no apparent damage that could be blamed on the black lights after a month or so. I believe he was using NO T12s like you would find at Walmart. Some corals grew fairly well (mainly those that fluoresced (sp?) the best. Those that did not display any fluorescence did not fair as well and some had to be removed. It was thought that those that did not fluoresce did not have the zooxanthellae to utilize the spectrum of light being given off. Btw, he was doing this in a tank lit only with black lights for (I think) 12 hours a day. He intended to take the experiment further and use blacklight in combination with daylight bulbs, but I think he got sidetracked.
Anyhow, my understanding is that there really is not enough UV penetrating the water to cause much damage. I tried it myself for a couple days. It made the water look cloudy, made no difference with the daylights on, and gave a pretty cool effect to my green corals when it was the only light on. I decided not to use it any longer and put it over my parakeets. The green with yellow head looks REALLY cool under the light, but doesn't seem to like staying under the light for very long.
HTH,
-Kevin
Anyhow, my understanding is that there really is not enough UV penetrating the water to cause much damage. I tried it myself for a couple days. It made the water look cloudy, made no difference with the daylights on, and gave a pretty cool effect to my green corals when it was the only light on. I decided not to use it any longer and put it over my parakeets. The green with yellow head looks REALLY cool under the light, but doesn't seem to like staying under the light for very long.
HTH,
-Kevin
killagoby
New member
Just buy some of these moonlights. They come in 3 colors!
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