Lighting and LED discussion

Look like healthy/ happy corals to me Evolved!

 

I don't want to really knock the 1 watt fixtures as they have their place in the industry. Not all lighting needs to be capable of supporting sps corals deep in the tank. I won't be so quick to praise AI as they only revealed the info because they feel that there is confidence built into the Cree name. Look up LED in Wikipedia and you will see several mentions of Cree. Cree and LED are like peanut butter and jelly.

Trust me, You do not want me to be the judge. Keep in mind that I was nominated twice for tank of the month on another board and both times declined because I was not happy with the tank.

 

Since LEDs put out an intense and highly specific photon the coloration is always much better. I will admit that coloration is amazing with LED because of the specific bandwidth... But the pitfall to this is that the narrow bandwidth makes it hard for some photosystems to function as efficiently as possible.
So trade off is better colors but slower growth :-/

 

led

can someone tell me anything about Blue Moon 60 led

 

im confused is it better to have 450nm led royal blue than whites ?are the whites in our tanks wasted light?

 

Oh I understand; aren't we all our own worst critic? But please go ahead and feel free; if you think they're lacking, you're entitled to that opinion.

Some of my SPS grow anything but slow. If they grew any faster, they'd be a nuisance. Some do seem to grow slowly, but I don't have much basis to compare to. At the end of the day, they all grow.

Interesting that you and gcarroll contradict each other a bit. You advocate color, he does not.

 

I really don't like the word contradict lol! It makes it sound like I'm saying someone else is wrong... I'm not like that. But our opinions and experiences are different and that can be due to a lot of things.
My statements are based off of my personal observations with use of LEDs over my DT for about 1 year, as well as friendly debates on the matter with my friend who has tested plenty of LED fixtures and is world famous for his research on halides.

of course, I am a strong advocate of UV and violet wavelengths because i have a background on how the mechanics of photon specific photosystems and chemoproteins work... but many will disagree on that matter because nobody famous has told them this before.

 

Oh and one thing to add is that color is subjective!
Your eyes might see a coral as breathtaking under a ushio 14k. While my eyes might see the same coral as breathtaking under a radium. It is all just relative to the photons present and in what intensities... Until you start getting into the wavelengths below 465nm

 

Blue Moon is one of the fixtures that uses 1 watt LEDs.

Most of the corals are collected in depths in excess of 7 meters (yes even sps). In those depths, corals mostly only see blue light as your reds and yellows are filtered out by the water by then. That being said you need the whites not so much for photosynthesis but for percieved color (Example: You will not see red if you have no red light). That goes without saying that most white LEDs are heavy on the blue output.

I will take a look at the pics later from my home computer. Right now I am viewing them from my phone.



Dingo is coming at the color issue from a different angle. First I am specically talking about SPS corals. I am strictly talking actual color. I feel that Dingo is referring to perceived color. I agree that LED has the nod when comparing perceived color. If you take a coral and compare the same coral under LED and MH, the coral will usually show more color under LED. I think we all agree that the difference is stunning. So why do we not see LED tanks that look way better than MH tanks? If the above is true this is exactly what we should see. I still have not seen that in the LED lit sps tanks that I have seen!

 

is that just for sps coral? because when I have only blue lighting on my tank all of my red and orange soft corals light up more then any of my other coral, almost like they are under a black light. I do not have any red sps coral yet so thats why I am asking