Gordonious
Active member
Listening to a lecture Anthony Calfo gave on coral farming I cam across a question/idea I just had to run by someone. In it someone asked about extending the photo period to extend the amount of growth. The answer was of course that corals reach a maximum photosynthesis point and eventually hit photoinhibition.
Either earlier in this lecture or in another one he had gave he mentioned some people giving the corals two shorter photo periods or more resulting in the corals spawning several times a year.
What would happen, and I realize this may different from species to species, if you have say three - four shorter photo periods a day, but instead of having only a third or a fourth of the length of a normal photo period you had a little more.
<CENTER><IMG SRC="http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/48214extendedphotoperiods.gif "></CENTER>
The example above shows a 12 hour photoperiod and then that period devided in half and seperated into two photoperiods in the second graph. The third graph shows those two photoperiods slightly extended.
My thought is that the corals during the extra night period can have enough time to absorb extra nutrients that the need from the water and feed the zooxenthele. Hopefully this way photoinhibition would be avoided and amount of usable day light can be extended.
Any coral farmer and most hobbyst would spend a great deal of money on a peice of equipment that would increase growth by 25%. Why not just use a little electricity on the corals you have.
I'm sure other people have asked these questions. Could someone just point out any literature they have found on this topic and give me a brief idea of what was found.
Either earlier in this lecture or in another one he had gave he mentioned some people giving the corals two shorter photo periods or more resulting in the corals spawning several times a year.
What would happen, and I realize this may different from species to species, if you have say three - four shorter photo periods a day, but instead of having only a third or a fourth of the length of a normal photo period you had a little more.
<CENTER><IMG SRC="http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/48214extendedphotoperiods.gif "></CENTER>
The example above shows a 12 hour photoperiod and then that period devided in half and seperated into two photoperiods in the second graph. The third graph shows those two photoperiods slightly extended.
My thought is that the corals during the extra night period can have enough time to absorb extra nutrients that the need from the water and feed the zooxenthele. Hopefully this way photoinhibition would be avoided and amount of usable day light can be extended.
Any coral farmer and most hobbyst would spend a great deal of money on a peice of equipment that would increase growth by 25%. Why not just use a little electricity on the corals you have.
I'm sure other people have asked these questions. Could someone just point out any literature they have found on this topic and give me a brief idea of what was found.
