2 colors vs 7 colors?

is one better than the other??

will it effect growth or just view??

most of the led 120watt fixtures come with 2 colors but the one i'm looking at has 7 different colors, including 2 kinds of red, blue, green, UV, violet, royal blue, and cool white

someone chime in for me and help me out i don't want to buy this light if it will end up being pointless

lights are bridgelux

 

Generally, the less colors, the less "disco effect". That is, each color will produce a shadow, and with the shimmer effect, these muti-colored shadows will move around like a disco ball.

However, this is reduced with wider optics, although, then you loose PAR (but cover a wider area). Also, cramming the LEDs into a smaller area helps, but then heat can become an issue and reduce the lifespan of the fixtue. Some, more advanced fixtures, have better cooling to remedy this though.

The advantage of more colors is it will bring out more colors in your corals. Also, some corals may like the extra spectrum and these extra colors may help growth. Also though, we don't mention this often, but some corals may not tolerate certain colors and may actually be sensitive to them. So, whether good or bad is a bit up in the air, although there are lots of opinions.

 

the fixture i'm talking about is the reefbreeders value 120 watt 7 color w/55 leds..

i wish some one who has had experiance with these would chime in.. i'm debating between that and the taotronics which has same specs for the most part just blue/white only

 

UV and violet and cool white
NW are better but CW can still grow corals pretty well.
UV will kill your corals but TV will help them a lot...

 

I have it and I am happy with it. I am not sure how much the additional colors help, as I have no reference.

 

I'd go with the 7 color system, I have it and love it. I started off with rapidled CW and RB only light and its great, but the extra color spectrums def helped growth and made the corals and fish look a TON cooler, great light for the price

http://www.3reef.com/forums/led-aquarium-lighting/rapidled-verse-reefbreeders-led-thread-138833.html

 

So for those, they're like $80 more for adding a few colors? Might be worth it. Did it have dimmers too?

My 2 NON dimmable- 2 color Taotronics shipped to my door were $115 each shipped.
Like I said, just for a few more colors, and defintely if it's dimmable I'd go for the 7 color too then!

 

7 color by far, with two colors using cool whites or cold whites (Especially these) you have barely any red in the spectrum, the best would be NW, RB, TV, cyan, DR, and CB.

 

Yeah, they're dimmable on 2 channels, Whites/colors and blues.

 

The more colors you have the more of a spectrum you will create. This is usually a good thing, but photosynthesis only requires certain amounts of certain nanometer wavelengths (different nm wavelengths refer to different parts of the visible light spectrum). So adding a bunch of random colors may not add useful light. For LED's, blue's (~450-460nm), whites (6500,10K,14K,etc.), red (660's nm), and violet/UV are all known useful colors, but not in equal amounts. Blues and whites are much more important though than reds and UV because most corals only need a small amount of light at red and UV wavelength's. The colors you listed are probably all okay, just don't go overkill on the odd colors and too much UV can cause problems. Also I don't know jack about the spectrum produced by green light, probably good in small amounts, I have just never been interested in using them.