Questions about sps coloration.

[Constrictor6090]

Sps will grow under LEDs, I don't personally like the way they look under LEDs. Just like some people don't like the pastel color some T5 bulbs give coral. I love the solid colors MHs give sps. LEDs are my favorite for lps and zoas, they look awesome under them. I agree that most people do adjust too quickly with LEDs. I think coral is a lot more sensitive under them because the diode is more direct shooting light straight down onto the corals. MHs seem to have more spread since they use reflectors and the bulb shoots light all around it.

 

[JPMagyar]

Yes 100% led. The blue cycle is longer then the whites, however not quite that extreme. The blues come on at 8am off at 9pm the whites/reds/greens come on at 9am off at 730pm

I know . . . I know . . . the LED lovers on RC will make every excuse under the sun why your corals are turning green other than the lighting.

How many times does this story have to be told or seen before folks will begin to understand. We know almost nothing about LED lighting and SPS. Yes LEDs grow coral; no LEDs don't always turn SPS green; yes LEDs can make corals colorful, BUT getting colorful SPS with LEDs is NOT easy to do.

If you want your millies to be some color other than green then invest in a T5 fixture from ATI.

Take it from a guy who knows something about coloful corals . . . my tank . . .

 

[mbingha]

I know . . . I know . . . the LED lovers on RC will make every excuse under the sun why your corals are turning green other than the lighting.

How many times does this story have to be told or seen before folks will begin to understand. We know almost nothing about LED lighting and SPS. Yes LEDs grow coral; no LEDs don't always turn SPS green; yes LEDs can make corals colorful, BUT getting colorful SPS with LEDs is NOT easy to do.

If you want your millies to be some color other than green then invest in a T5 fixture from ATI.

Take it from a guy who knows something about coloful corals . . . my tank . . .

That's a beautiful tank for sure, but anyone that has problems with LEDs (assuming they are using proven LEDs and not some weak marine orbit or otherwise) is having problems because of user error. LEDs aren't for the novice because it's an added complexity, but if you have a good handle on keeping a reef tank, and understand how corals respond to too much/little light it's not that difficult to have a beautiful sps under LEDs.

 

[toddmau5]

Well I decided to pull the optics off the leds, and we'll see where it goes from here

 

[JPMagyar]

Well I decided to pull the optics off the leds, and we'll see where it goes from here

Here's what we know about Symbiodinium.

1) Symbiodinium are responsible for the colors of our corals.
2) Symbiodinium come in many different "clades".
3) The genetic diversity of symbiodinium clades has only barely begun to be studied.
4) Different clades react differently to different wavelengths of light.
5) LEDs produce extremely narrow spectrums.
6) No one can tell you what effect a particular wavelength of light will have on your corals because only one or two corals have been studied in this manner out of thousands of possible corals.
7) We know as a fact from real world experience that T5 lighting provides adequate spectrum to make MOST corals colorful.
8) We know as a fact that many people are having mixed results making corals colorful using LED lighting.

 

[Reefvet]

... if you have a good handle on keeping a reef tank, and understand how corals respond to too much/little light it's not that difficult to have a beautiful sps under leds.

+1

 

[toddmau5]

If this turns out to be a lighting issue, and I trust the ones that have been doing this far longer then myself, then I think I know what went wrong and I feel pretty dumb for it. I had the optics on, and was getting the same par top to bottom, so when the sps at the top bleached, I cranked the lights way down until the started to Brown and very slowly stated ramping them back up. I never associated green with lack of light. Since green is still very colourful I assumed it was a nutrient issue and not lighting. So I pulled the optics of which should make the light at the top far less harsh and I can run them higher. I guess we'll wait and see

 

[saltyair]

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2009/4/aafeature1
Colorful coral is not light only actually only 1/2 of the equation.
Iron is one major factor to your green corals.
advanced aquarist actually broke down each color to an element.
Leds will and do grow and color up corals.
Chemistry its all in the chemistry

 

[mwladdicted]

I know . . . I know . . . the LED lovers on RC will make every excuse under the sun why your corals are turning green other than the lighting.

How many times does this story have to be told or seen before folks will begin to understand. We know almost nothing about LED lighting and SPS. Yes LEDs grow coral; no LEDs don't always turn SPS green; yes LEDs can make corals colorful, BUT getting colorful SPS with LEDs is NOT easy to do.

If you want your millies to be some color other than green then invest in a T5 fixture from ATI.

Take it from a guy who knows something about coloful corals . . . my tank . . .

Such an awesome tank. Always been a favorite of mine.

 

[toddmau5]

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2009/4/aafeature1
Colorful coral is not light only actually only 1/2 of the equation.
Iron is one major factor to your green corals.
advanced aquarist actually broke down each color to an element.
Leds will and do grow and color up corals.
Chemistry its all in the chemistry

I had read a similar article, not as in depth as this one and that's what brought me to start testing and dosing the different elements. my iron level was completely undetectable. so far most responding to the thread say dosing the iron and poor lighting is causing my problems... and finally someone who seemed to be on the same page as me...

 

[Dapg8gt]

When I think green I think iron also fwiw. I'd go back to the basics and stop dosing the colors program and wait it out.

I agree that led can grow some awesome colored sps but most of the pics I've seen were not using the cheaper fixtures or if they were (tbd320reef=or something) they had the whites dialed way down.

Could it possibly be from you tweaking the lights/nutrients to much? You say slowly but it seems like you are doing a lot of different things with additives and light intensities that don't seem to be doing anything but adding instability to the tank. Sps can take months to show negative effects of tweaking and issues..

I personally had horrible results with the value fixture on my frag tank and once I switched it out all returned to normal.. Most color shifts were acans but my sps did not like that fixture one bit and that was the only thing that was added and removed that was obviously causing some issues..

Just my opinion though but I'd ditch the colors program, keep nutrients in check (not 0) and find a new light for a few months and rule out the cheaper fixture and go from there.

 

[toddmau5]

When I think green I think iron also fwiw. I'd go back to the basics and stop dosing the colors program and wait it out.

I agree that led can grow some awesome colored sps but most of the pics I've seen were not using the cheaper fixtures or if they were (tbd320reef=or something) they had the whites dialed way down.

Could it possibly be from you tweaking the lights/nutrients to much? You say slowly but it seems like you are doing a lot of different things with additives and light intensities that don't seem to be doing anything but adding instability to the tank. Sps can take months to show negative effects of tweaking and issues..

I personally had horrible results with the value fixture on my frag tank and once I switched it out all returned to normal.. Most color shifts were acans but my sps did not like that fixture one bit and that was the only thing that was added and removed that was obviously causing some issues..

Just my opinion though but I'd ditch the colors program, keep nutrients in check (not 0) and find a new light for a few months and rule out the cheaper fixture and go from there.

when I say slowly, I mean over months. I know I don't see results right away, I've been running these lights for about 8 months now. I started with the whites about 25% sps started bleaching and burning so I turned them down to about 10% just to the point that I could just see the whites in the tank. bleaching stopped and the Browning started. so every week I bump the whites up just a hair on water change day. and have been working them back up. I was back at 25% this was all over the course of like Jan to may. by tri color and everything else in the tank colored up nicely. it's only the millies I'm really having any issues with. and as far as dosing a lot over a short period of time, so far I've only dosed 2ml of iron one time, that was almost 2 weeks ago now. if my math is correct. after dosing my iron was still barely detectable at all. I started going after iron because I'm losing reds and iron measured zero. my fear was going any higher with the lights and bleaching again.

 

[JPMagyar]

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2009/4/aafeature1
Colorful coral is not light only actually only 1/2 of the equation.
Iron is one major factor to your green corals.
advanced aquarist actually broke down each color to an element.
Leds will and do grow and color up corals.
Chemistry its all in the chemistry

The article you quote was by Dana Riddle who has done an excellent job of bringing scientific research on corals to the attention of the average aquarist, but if you take a moment to read the papers he used for the article you will find that the scientists studied only a handful of corals in total and never made any conclusion that "light is only 1/2 the equation". They found that other factors are involved, but they NEVER claimed a percentage of importance nor even came close in defining the interaction between light, food, and chemistry in developing an overall theory for corals. Heck the research wasn't even always on acropora. The metals research was done on discosoma.

We have precious little scientific research to help us as aquarists, but we do have a heck of a lot of real world experience in the form of successful reefs to mimic and the most successful reefs continue to be dominated by metal halide and fluorescent lighting, AND do a search on RC for LED AND green and you will find dozens of folks complaining that their coral/corals turned green under LED lighting.

 

[mbingha]

My coral hasn't turned green under LEDs in fact my reds and oranges have really come out

 

[Realposition]

I don't see how this could be anything but a light issue, OP said he wasn't dosing anything and using IO salt when everything turned green, seems pretty unlikely to be a chemistry problem. We all know LEDs can do a fine job but it takes a lot more experience to know if your intensity is too low/high or possibly the wrong spectrum. Led just adds 1 more variable to a problem

 

[Wazzel]

The blues are actually turned up pretty high, make the tank pretty ugly. The whites were super low, 10% then everything in the tank browned out really bad so I've been slowly ramping the whites back up very little, my tri color is finally purple again

Sounds like a lighting issue, but not becasue they are LEDs. More likely you ****ed off the corals by makeing big changes. If they have worked back to green from brown you are headded in the correct direction. It may take a while for them to come back to the orginal colors. Take your time and make small adjustments.

I run LEDs on my tank. I got a frag pack a couple of weeks ago and the coral were dull/brown/green when added to my tank due to fragging and shipping. They are slow coloring up to what they are supposed to be but are going in the right direction.

 

[fishguy597]

I have corals that were green when I bought them. After time under my radions they have turned blue and purple. One of them being a milli. I think a quality light makes all the difference and water quality/stability. Leds have made progressc over the years. Most of the time it's user error in intensity either way high or low. They need to be acclamation over a month or so.

 

[toddmau5]

First off. I owe everyone an apology for my stubbornness in the lighting disbelief. You guys were right (so far) and I was wrong. Here's what I did. Knowing that going any higher with the white intensity only caused bleaching I sat and thought about the lighting and the par readings I was getting. So I decided to do an experiment. I Pulled the optics off of one panel of the leds. This looks super dim compared to the other side. I now have to run both channels at 100%. So it's been what, exactly a month? Pink millie is pink again. Blue millie is blue. Everything is turning the color they are supposed to be. I'm happy now. The only two things that haven't responded are my Forrest fire digi (still can't get any green out of it) and the red planet which is just Strait green right now.

 

[zangmann]

Glad to hear things are improving.

Can you give us a little more info on your experiment? What were the PAR readings before/after on the side without optics? Did you remove optics from both the white and blue channels? Did you change the lighting schedule? Did you stop dosing? Did you notice any change on the side WITH the optics? Has anything else in your tank changed?

More info is needed to make this a truly useful thread - I believe there are quite a few other reefers in this situation.

It could be the tank is just now recovering from the bleaching event and colors are coming back after browning out - I recall reading green is a common intermediary color for corals to go through...

 

[toddmau5]

PAR readings before were 160 at the bottom and 180 towards the top. I don't have the PAR meter yet to take a reading after the optic but I always thought it was odd that the readings were so similar from top to bottom. If I went any higher on the intensity then things would bleach. As I though about it the optics are there to project the light deeper into a taller tank. So I think what was happening is that with the optics on there I wasn't getting the spread and wavelength blending that was needed until it hit the bottom of the tank. With the optics it was probably also acting like a magnifying glass with the white spectrum on the corals towards the top of the tank which I think is where the bleaching was coming from. As stated multiple times before I only ever dosed the one time, so yes, I stopped the dosing. There have been no changes to the corals on the side of the tank that still has the optics. No other changes to the tank have been made other then removing the optics and ramping up the intensity. Until I can get the PAR meter again I unfortunately don't have any further information. I don't really believe they were stuck in the intermediate green color from browning since the lighting had not changed in 6 months at least. At this point I really think that the light spectrum wasn't blending and not high enough where it needed to be with the optics on. I'm keeping an eye on everything and the colors are definitely getting more rich. I'll try to gather as much information as I can before we switch everything over to the new tank.