Do light intervals impair coral growth?

crn005

New member
Say, if there are two channels of LEDs, one white and one royal blue, and the royal blue would go off for 30 seconds every 20 minutes, then would this inhibit coral growth much? If not, then say the blues went off for 30 seconds every 5 minutes. Would that have an effect? When does this start to impair growth?
 
Why would anyone have ever investigated that?

I have no idea. The scientific community has found a few interesting things to say the least by exploring strange ideas though. Long story short, my tank was exposed to those conditions for a few weeks. I had about four total variables change all at once and the corals didn't like one of them. Just seeing which variables I could eliminate.
 
I have no idea. The scientific community has found a few interesting things to say the least by exploring strange ideas though. Long story short, my tank was exposed to those conditions for a few weeks. I had about four total variables change all at once and the corals didn't like one of them. Just seeing which variables I could eliminate.
Why don't you list the four variable that changed and the issues you observed with the corals? That would be a better approach to get some help.

It's probably a good bet that some water parameter caused the issue rather than a lighting issue. That usually takes some time to have an effect.
 
Thirty seconds? I seriously doubt they even noticed. I'm sure big fish swim over them and put them in the shade more often than that on the reef.
 
Why don't you list the four variable that changed and the issues you observed with the corals? That would be a better approach to get some help.

It's probably a good bet that some water parameter caused the issue rather than a lighting issue. That usually takes some time to have an effect.

Well, I went out of town for a weekend while my ATO was out of commission. Mom was in charge of manual top offs and didn't do a single one. Considering how hot it has been here, the fans are on during the summer time. The water level was about an inch below my overflow. Also, I changed 4 out of my white LEDs out for Lime LEDs about a week before. Also, the ATO float switch had been leaking a decent amount of voltage for about two weeks. It was more than enough to feel. Also, upon putting in my new LEDs, I soldered some burned out LEDs that had popped off of the heatsink and overheated a while back. This caused the blue line to have these little intervals throughout the day. A handful of days ago, it finally burned out, even though I fixed the amperage issue the week before.

So, long story short, there were a handful of things going on. Oh, also, vermetid snails showed up out of nowhere. At the end of the day though, I just noticed that my calcium had dropped from ~440 to 380. I think this has a bit to do with it. I had only been testing alk because I've never really had an issue keeping my Ca up. I didn't realize how quickly the demand was growing and I think that might be the culprit. I stopped using kalk a while back because it was just too much for the low demand of my tank and my alk levels were getting higher than I liked. Now, I'm having to manually dose multiple times per week so it looks like I can get it up and going again!
 
Hhaha, and after all of that, you're asking if a flickering light every 5 mins would pose a problem? Come on, you must be joking!
 
Well, I went out of town for a weekend while my ATO was out of commission. Mom was in charge of manual top offs and didn't do a single one. Considering how hot it has been here, the fans are on during the summer time. The water level was about an inch below my overflow. Also, I changed 4 out of my white LEDs out for Lime LEDs about a week before. Also, the ATO float switch had been leaking a decent amount of voltage for about two weeks. It was more than enough to feel. Also, upon putting in my new LEDs, I soldered some burned out LEDs that had popped off of the heatsink and overheated a while back. This caused the blue line to have these little intervals throughout the day. A handful of days ago, it finally burned out, even though I fixed the amperage issue the week before.

So, long story short, there were a handful of things going on. Oh, also, vermetid snails showed up out of nowhere. At the end of the day though, I just noticed that my calcium had dropped from ~440 to 380. I think this has a bit to do with it. I had only been testing alk because I've never really had an issue keeping my Ca up. I didn't realize how quickly the demand was growing and I think that might be the culprit. I stopped using kalk a while back because it was just too much for the low demand of my tank and my alk levels were getting higher than I liked. Now, I'm having to manually dose multiple times per week so it looks like I can get it up and going again!
If I had to bet on something, it was the fact that top off water was not added, causing the water to not reach the sump which effected quite a few things; mostly a temperature rise in the tank (you claim it was very warm) and elevated PH due to poor oxygenation of the water column which also probably led to a drop in alkalinity as the tank went more acidic. The light had nothing to do with it.
 
Hhaha, and after all of that, you're asking if a flickering light every 5 mins would pose a problem? Come on, you must be joking!

Dang it, don't blame me! I tend to skip the simple details too often. I think the Alzheimer's is kicking in. Sad thing is that I'm in my late 20's. Dang it. Oh well, that's why I run it by other people.

Also, yeah maybe the water evaporating was a big issue. I just haven't ever experienced that so I didn't know the significance of it. Either way, as of the end of this week, all of the variables will be corrected. I have my LDD drivers coming in tomorrow to push my DIY Radion pucks and my ATO will finally be resolved. That's some temporary piece of mind.
 
The former English teacher in me just cried a little bit. I'm normally the one to correct people on that.
 
Water being low because of a lack of top off's will only be relevant to the impact that would it would have had on salinity. Since you didn't mention your salinity when you came back as well as before and didn't mention tank size and evaporation rate, I wouldn't be so quick to blame your corals lack of happiness on the ATO. Unless you have a really stupid amout of evaporation, the typical 1 gallon evap per day for every 100 gallons of water isn't going to impact your tank enough for the corals to respond negatively for any length of time. Not after a weekend of no top off's anyway.

You mentioned you changed white LED's for lime ones?? That is change in spectrum. Depending on your LED count and mix of LED's, that could be a big change of spectrum too. Regardless, any spectrum change will temporarily imact corals and it could take a week or more for them to react positively and in some cases, they may never like the change.


It's obviously been several weeks since you posed this question.. How is the tank now? What promted you to swap the cool whites to the lime LED's? What kind of float switch are you running that could leak electricity?? Most float switches are nothing more than an open/closed circuit.
 
Everything is fine and dandy now. I have added a lot more frags and everything is happy and growing well. As far as what caused me to change the lights before, it was purely curiosity. I even switched them again. I have DIY Radion pucks now. The float switch has been fixed too. It was from a company that did a great job fixing it and getting it back to me.
 
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