Red light negatively affects health of stony coral

[ralph atl]

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/blog/red-light-negatively-affects-health-of-stony-coral">http://www.advancedaquarist.com/blog/red-light-negatively-affects-health-of-stony-coral</a>


Red light negatively affects health of stony coral...

I have two, 400 watt 20k Radiums with a Reefbrite XHO LED Actinic Blue

I'm good, lol....


Well? are you going to adjust?

 

[jc_k]

Very interesting......

 

[jeffmuse]

Cool article, thanks for sharing that!

 

[reeferman]

glad i never bought into the red craze.i always thought they were useless for coral health,now seems they are harmful.

 

[morganatlanta]

Could you also interpret it as the coral uses red light to gauge overall light levels and take protective measures if it is too high, so if you use very high levels of light with an unnaturally blue-slanted spectrum, you could more easily fry your corals? If you put 800 par of sunlight on a coral, it must be in the top few meters of water and will see lots of red, but if you put 800 par of Royal Blue LED on it, it won't see any red at all. Not sure that would be a good thing.

 

[kirkwood]

..."the idea is not that red light is necessarily harmful but that too much red light can have negative effects on how stony corals regulate photosynthesis."

the article didn't define "too much" however i assume the LED units I see are far from providing "too much" red light. Most have just a couple red LED's for every 20+ blue LED's.

I have 170 3watt LEDs of which 7 are hyper red 660nm LEDs. Now that I think about the reds, I did have one green tabling acro colony that mysteriously exhibited STN and it was located directly under a red LED with 90 degree optics. I covered up the Red LED with electrical tape and saved various frags of the colony, however even after covering the red LED the bulk of the colony still died. I will note however that at the time I had 90 degree optics on all the LEDs and all SPS were showing a degree of bleaching. I have since removed ALL optics and moved all LEDS about 2 feet above the water surface. Everything is looking better than ever.

Just sharing my experience.

 

[darren24]

I use an ATI Powermodule (LED with T5's) and their is a red spectrum that I use. My sps looks fine. Did I misread or did it not say that Radium's had red in them?

 

[heathlindner25]

I dont grow any coral under a bank of red leds..

 

[heathlindner25]

I dont grow any coral under a bank of red leds.. so I guess my answer would be no I'm not going to change my LEDs

 

[ralph atl]

here is an awesome article by Dana Riddle:

 

[jennm]

I remember when Dana gave his talk to ARC back around 2001-ish. He'd come to Atlanta (to see his family) from MACNA and gave the same talk he'd done at MACNA, to us here.

Back then he was experimenting with LED light, and I remember that the Pocillipora meandrina he was experimenting with, bleached under a red LED.

Just last year when he and I got together, I revisited that topic with him, because I was seeing a lot of red being offered in new LED fixtures.

So it's not NEW knowledge, it's just finally getting some attention

Jenn

 

[kirkwood]

mysterybox;945363 wrote: here is an awesome article by Dana Riddle:

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2012/12/corals">http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2012/12/corals</a>[/QUOTE]

Nice one Ralph.

My general takeaways here:

1) Lots of excitation in the UV and Purple wavelength.

2) "Note: I suspect most hobbyists use an Apogee PAR meter to make measurements. These work fine when measuring sunlight and metal halide lamps but they are challenged when used to estimate light output of LEDs. Opinions vary on how to correct the Apogee's readings."

This may explain why many LED users experience bleaching and SPS decline even when they think their PAR measurements are in line with conventional practices. I know when my LED PAR was 1,000 at the surface and 400-600 with my SPS frags/colonies I was experiencing some bleaching. It wasn't till I removed all 90 degree optics and pulled the lights another foot off the water surface till things started coloring up.

3) I have a Garf Bonsai that I just can't get nice purple color out of. Recently I accidentaly glued a frag of the bonsai upside down on the plug. The result was an insanely bright green glowing coral without a touch of purple. It looks much healthier than the purple mother colony. This is obviously a change in pigment but I'm left scratching my head trying to explain it. Anyone have an idea?

 

[ringo®]

Maybe it's just me, but I have to leave my bonsai lower than my other sps to get a nice purple.