Oh dear, I just posted a similar thread before finding this one which I somehow missed in my previous search and reading -
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?p=19963328#post19963328 which went as follows:
Does anyone use UV LED's to achieve coral flourescence?
In getting into reefs, I'd like to achieve a 'natural' looking spectrum of light (i.e. sunlight temperature light very near the surface), and the very bluish-purple saturated look common to many reef tanks is not quite my favourite as I personally find it disconcertingly unnatural looking.
So I'd like to both get the daylight look while getting coral colours to really pop. Possible solution perhaps? I'm looking at UV LED's at 365 nm. Light above 380 or 390 is visible to us, while wavelengths shorter than 320 nm are dangerous to our eyes, (and would give you a tan). So the 365 nm long-wave UV light seems like a good wavelength, as that wouldn't shift the look of the lighting too much, wouldn't be dangerous to our stock and ourselves, but would still make colours really pop. Might this work okay?
Sunlight, as well as MH light both contain UV wavelengths, so it's not as if it's something unnatural or unusual to reefs or reef tanks. If you did light your tank with a bit of medium wavelength UV light, then you would also have the corals producing colourful extra pigments to protect themselves from these wavelengths (just as we too tan in the sun). This seems a little more risky, though almost tempting to try in small amounts... The risk of too much UV light, or too much of any light in general, is of course photo-inhibition, but so long as you're not overdoing it I wouldn't guess this would be a significant risk.
Here is a decent article on some of these matters, with some excerpts -
http://reefworks.co.uk/articles/obta...m-your-corals/
"Dunlap and Chalker (1986) found three S-320 compounds in Acropora formosa which absorb light between 310 and 340nm and claim that these compounds are seen in corals as violet or fluorescent pigments."
"it has been shown that UV radiation in the wavelengths also known to induce colouration in corals can result in photoinhibition when exposed at the levels given off by metal halide bulbs."
Accordingly, I was starting to think something along the lines of using the following, in the form of high-powered LED chips.
Series 1: Natural/Neutral White 5000-5500K as one series. (I want decently balanced warm enough light to get the warm colours in the tank to pop as well).
Series 2: Royal Blue
Series 3: Blue, Cyan, Violet, Ultraviolet at 365 nm -
http://uk.mouser.com/ProductDetail/L...Kl2RitEyO3c=
I'd likely want to use a diffuser on the chips such as the Blue, Cyan, Violet, and Ultraviolet, to make sure they cover the entire tank relatively uniformly without any spotlighting. With the different series I could tune the overall colour temperature, intensity, and highlight colours up or down as much as I desire. In any case, it seems that Royal Blues actually do a better job than UV of getting coral colours to pop, but I wouldn't want to use too much of them, as that would overpower the look with too sterile of light, which is why I thought supplementing the RB with UV might be a good combo.
The 10K light I usually see recommended I suppose might be appropriate for large deep aquariums, where the cold lighting colour might help compensate for any yellowness to the water. However, in smaller tanks such as the 40 gallon range I have in mind, and so long as the water is kept very clear then I wouldn't have expected to need quite that cool of light colour. And 10K lighting seems to work better with MH than with LED, from what I gather thus far.
(There is also this true-UV fluorescent fixture, though I'm not yet sure what UV intensity you'd actually want and whether this would be far too much for most tanks
http://glowinc.com/detail.aspx?ID=83).
P.S. I'm a noob, so bear with me if I'm way off on anything here!
P.S.S. I was at an architectural lighting expo this week and one manufacturer there had 98 CRI LED's even. So I'm speaking to them now to see if those would be available to purchase individually. 98 CRI might achieve quite a considerable jump in enabling every colour in our reefs to look quite naturally as they do under true sunlight, so that's certainly an interesting development as well.
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