Whites for lighting tank

[fernalfer]

Ok i recently had a bout with a bad Cyano outbreak. I did a 3 day blackout and since have had great tank husbandry and it has been cyano free for 5 months.

Now prior my LED light photo period was from 9am lights on but ramped up slowly with the highest intensity for 4 hrs. between 2pm and 5pm and then ramped back down and lights out at 10pm. 13 hrs total. But the first and last hour was basically moon lighting.

At its highest intensity the whites would be at 25% since having the 3 day blackout i've only run the blues and and UV (Purple) lights at a much lower intensity. My corals have never looked better and are growing great.

Which makes me wonder are whites even needed? Do LED lights really have to be that intense to get growth? Just wondering if this is going to fade away and i'll need to turn the whites back on slowly or if i can just continue on this way.

Anybody have any experience with this that could comment?


By the way i have Reef breeder Photon V2's 48" for lighting

 

[mcgyvr]

Yes.. In general one could run with mostly a blue spectrum...
Look at what happens in the ocean... guess what color/spectrum penetrates the furthest..

 

[ComforablyNumb]

It is very true that the blue spectrum is one most needed for corals.

Kessil, for instance, has their built in controller (Kessil Logic) set so that you can adjust the white spectrum however you like to please your eye, but it will always maintain a very high percentage of blue. I include below the spectral graph of 3 various settings and you will notice how high the blue/UV end remains throughout:



HTH

 

[Ron Reefman]

I'd say most reefers with relatively new leds will tell you they run their blue leds at some level and their white leds at half of that... some less... and a few even at 20% of the blue level.

It's a bit of a mystery to me why the manufacturers put so many white leds in their fixtures. I just got a new ReeFi-Lab pendant led that is 150 watts. It has 5 channels with 10 leds on each one. Only one of them has 5 white and 5 blue. There are 2 more channels that are all blue. One is all red & green and the last is violet and UV. It's the first led fixture I've ever had that I run the white channel higher than the blues!