Hi guys I am very new to this hobby and I don't know much about lighting a reef tank. I currently have a 29 gallon tank with mushrooms, small wall hammer and a clown. Long story short, i made my own custom lights using a blue t5 and pink LEDs to get that purplish look which is usually seen in reef tanks. For this reason i don't have a blend of white/Florescent light, will that be as issue to the corals? Both my corals open up fine and i think are doing good in the light. But is it necessary to have a Florescent light on tanks is what I'm trying to understand.
Is Florescent/ White light really important in a reef tank?
- Thread starter taherk77
- Start date
Bpb
New member
Understand that light is light. It doesn't matter what technology produces light waves (or photons). A photon is a photon be it from a tube, bulb, or diode. You just need the correct wavelengths to develop colorful pigments and sustain photosynthesis. Ensure your lights are heavy in wavelengths from 400-500 nm, with emphasis between 420-450 nm, and the rest should be to taste, taking care to not overdo it in the far red spectrum if using LEDs. Hope that helps
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
Bpb
New member
I'll follow by saying secondary importance to color, is spread and strength. The more area your lights cover, fewer shadows, and more even the intensity, the happier corals will be. Too much or too little light too quickly will cause damage, but corals are highly adaptable and have tons of accessory pigments that can utilize a wide array of spectra and intensity if properly acclimated and water chemistry is excellent
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
ReefMaster48
New member
I pretty much run my tanks the same way. My frag tank is nearly all blue, except my t5 has some white in it. What size t5 light to you have? I would run that with a ATI blue plus or something with a LITTLE whiter spectrum, as some people say that it can benefit corals, and mine seemed to open a little quicker when they have a tiny bit of white. However, you can cover up that white look with powerful LEDs in the blue spectrums to get you back to that look you want.
However, if you plan on keeping clowns, be careful with the all blue LEDs and no white spectrum. There are a number of people (including me) that have had fighting issues with clown pairs in all blue lighting. Its like they go from happy and best friends to a death match. Not sure why, but it just happens IME.
I am using a custom blue 2 feet long t5 with a pink 2 feet
LED light. As far as clowns are concerned i don't think i will have the problem you mentioned because i only have one clown fish for now and I'm into making a coral only kind of tank with only a small amount of fish in it. In the future i might add a tang to it and that's it.
ReefMaster48
New member
Gotcha! Yea blue is the main growing and health spectrum of corals, so thats the most important one.
BTW, 29 is way to small for a tang. Make sure you do some research before adding any corals or fish.
Ron Reefman
Active member
What???
Deep water corals never see red spectrum as it is the first filtered out by the water!
And I've never heard anybody ever say shallow corals like yellow and green???
Any photosynthetic coral has zooxanthellae (algae) that is inside the coral and does photosynthesis which feeds the coral using mostly blue spectrum. Some shallow water corals have some zooxanthellae that use some red spectrum, but it's only a small percentage.
Give your coral just yellow and green spectrum and you'll be watching it slowly fade away.
der_wille_zur_macht
Team RC
Above you mentioned corals from deep water "liking" red (and blue). Ron was pointing out that it's not natural for deepwater corals to get ANY red light. I don't think there was any debate about the blue part.
It's really hard to have deep, meaningful discussions on this topic without covering the basics, first. What are your goals? Growth? A specific coloration? Natural color and natural growth? Some mix of the above? Our tanks rarely mimic nature closely in terms of growth rate and coloration, and the differences in lighting are probably a major factor in that. Almost every single reef tank includes mixes of specimens that wouldn't be near each other in nature, which makes it hard to even consider mimicking nature in the first place, much less targeting needs of specific corals - for instance, trying to give a deepwater specimen a bluer spectrum than a shallow water coral is impossible when they're inches away from each other.
The good news is, though, that none of this seems to matter. It's pretty easy to follow the typical formula and get the typical results. Broad spectrum light is "safe" because it is broad. Mixing your own blend of monochromatic LEDs can certainly work (hint: go heavy on blues, don't use too much red, and spend some time looking at the spectrum covered under PUR and PAR) but it's harder to get right, AND it will usually result in coloration that's different than what most people would get in a typical reef tank. Different doesn't mean bad, though.
Which brings up another topic - when people talk about coloration of corals and appearance, it's important to separate color due to the inherent biology of the specimen, versus color due to reflected/fluoresced light. It's possible to trigger biological changes in a coral (for instance, browning one out) that change appearance, and it's also possible to change the appearance simply by shifting the spectrum (for instance, causing a colorful coral to look brown and washed out by cutting back on the spectra it reflects/fluoresces). Blue light is good for coral growth but it's also one of the primary spectra that causes fluorescence so it's good for appearance, too.
Ron Reefman
Active member
+1 for all that der_wille_zur_macht stated.
There are 2 ways to look at corals. First under a more natural white light similar to what a shallow reef would have as well as the room our aquarium would sit it. More white than anything else. This is reflected light and the coral's colors appear more pastel looking. Second there is the far more blue light of leds or deeper water and here the corals don't reflect light, they fluoresce light in colors from green to yellow, orange and red. They don't fluoresce blue as the use some of the energy of the blue light to make light and that makes the colors they fluoresce all longer wavelengths than blue.
There is also the huge mixed area between mostly white and mostly blue. But the light fluoresced due to the blue light is mostly lost and 'washed out' due to the white light. The blue can change the colors you see even under white light, but it's not until you get to a serious amount of blue and much less white that the fluoresced colors really pop.
As stated above, blue is what most photosynthetic corals use for that process which is a major source of food. However, other spectrum can and do contribute to coral colors and overall health as these other spectrum help create pigments and other chemical reactions to take place inside the coral.
There are 2 ways to look at corals. First under a more natural white light similar to what a shallow reef would have as well as the room our aquarium would sit it. More white than anything else. This is reflected light and the coral's colors appear more pastel looking. Second there is the far more blue light of leds or deeper water and here the corals don't reflect light, they fluoresce light in colors from green to yellow, orange and red. They don't fluoresce blue as the use some of the energy of the blue light to make light and that makes the colors they fluoresce all longer wavelengths than blue.
There is also the huge mixed area between mostly white and mostly blue. But the light fluoresced due to the blue light is mostly lost and 'washed out' due to the white light. The blue can change the colors you see even under white light, but it's not until you get to a serious amount of blue and much less white that the fluoresced colors really pop.
As stated above, blue is what most photosynthetic corals use for that process which is a major source of food. However, other spectrum can and do contribute to coral colors and overall health as these other spectrum help create pigments and other chemical reactions to take place inside the coral.
Bpb
New member
I think a more appropriate statement earlier would have been that shallow water corals are EXPOSED to more green and yellow light, rather than they PREFER it.
I tend to favor a tank under whiter light. If nutrients are managed appropriately and enough blue/violet is still present you can still get terrific colors in whiter light
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
I tend to favor a tank under whiter light. If nutrients are managed appropriately and enough blue/violet is still present you can still get terrific colors in whiter light
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
Lots of new studies showing that red and far red move significant amounts of energy from PSII to PSI - waves up 850nm. This can get tricky since many corals in nature are below this 5-10/15M range where red and far-red can penetrate, but they nearly all seem to do better when some is introduced. There are more studies to come, but so far, this seems solid - Dana Riddle is working on a study right now.
A few of the new European LED panels are putting IR and more/different reds into the fixtures to expedite this energy transfer. Their research and supposition is that the corals ability to handle more massive amounts of light from other sources like MH and T5 are because of some IR. I would expect to see this copied in the US and China - if nothing else, it is a good sales pitch and people might upgrade.
What is REALLY hard is that a lot of the red diodes that some fixtures use have harmful amounts of radiation well above what is needed, so they have to get turned down or coral gets burned... this is not a statement about the need for red light, but a statement about the suitability of some particular red diodes to do the job for corals.
Every species of true coral have proteins that excite over 700nm. While they don't all NEED waves that high, if you have them, they will get energy from them. Most also excite below 350nm. As it turns out, the spectrum that the sun provides did create living organisms that found a way to take advantage of what they had at their disposal while also being totally adaptable to less.
A few of the new European LED panels are putting IR and more/different reds into the fixtures to expedite this energy transfer. Their research and supposition is that the corals ability to handle more massive amounts of light from other sources like MH and T5 are because of some IR. I would expect to see this copied in the US and China - if nothing else, it is a good sales pitch and people might upgrade.
What is REALLY hard is that a lot of the red diodes that some fixtures use have harmful amounts of radiation well above what is needed, so they have to get turned down or coral gets burned... this is not a statement about the need for red light, but a statement about the suitability of some particular red diodes to do the job for corals.
Every species of true coral have proteins that excite over 700nm. While they don't all NEED waves that high, if you have them, they will get energy from them. Most also excite below 350nm. As it turns out, the spectrum that the sun provides did create living organisms that found a way to take advantage of what they had at their disposal while also being totally adaptable to less.
Times are changing fast in the lighting market. I hope that's a good thing. Yes, exposed would be a much better word in this case. While far from any expert, the word "preferred" comes from the notion that all living things either move towards those elements for which they thrive, or over time, adapt or perish. While I have read much about negatives of LED's, I am so far pleased with just how much my corals grew in respect to my old T5. For the first time I can actually see and control the colours which make up the spectrum although these colors tend to washout (except for the blue) under natural white light, but they are there. While Each colour may not be natural to the coral, they usually tell me quickly what they don't like.
JDA....very well written....so thank you for helping me understand lighting better.
JDA....very well written....so thank you for helping me understand lighting better.
Just want to point out, 365nm of Ultraviolet to perhaps 395 is where your corals will extremely fluoresce. So when you say "serious amount of blue", that's not necessary as I take that as implying increasing intensity which isn't good for your corals per se. All you need is a reef light that incorporates LEDs in the UV spectrum as aforementioned. That's where corals pop in all their neon glory.
Ps. I know I revived an old thread. But information on the internet is forever so I felt it best to chime in and help progress our knowledge as hobbyist's. Seeing as I searched and found this thread in the first place. =)
gprdypoo04
New member
Who really cares. Enjoy your reef!
Someone who wants to continue enjoying his reef cares. He wouldn't have asked otherwise. This just happens to be one of those questions that will drive a lot of answers that delve pretty heavily into the science behind photosynthesis, the engineering behind LEDs (and other lighting), and the subjective "I don't like Windex water" comments.
However, to your point, luckily it's a pretty valid response to this question too. From what I've seen since the advent of good T5 phosphors, then on to LED emergence, it really doesn't matter if you want to run a blue tank or a full spectrum tank. If I was a betting man, I'd say that the nuiances that we could use to argue one way or another are something observed in a lab, not something relevant in our tanks. There's still plenty of energy from modern blue lighting to grow coral. I'd be surprised if this was true of the old actinic PC bulbs, and maybe even VHOs. Back then it was white for growth (MH or florescent) and blue for color.
I still prefer a full spectrum tank over an all blue one, but that's just like preferring red wine over white. They're both wine at the end of the day.
in other words, it isn't about appearance. It's about photosynthetic elements in corals which produce sugars to feed corals, which do not feed on fish food, and they are quite sensitive to what kind of light and how intense. You can kill a coral by blasting it with the wrong light, or starve it to death with another wrong choice of light.
Similar threads
