Jestersix

Lighting Question

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I never could understand specifics about the light spectrum so figured its best to ask the experts here ;)

I have a single Kessil A350W over my 40B mixed reef and have been running mixed combinations of white & actinics for the last 6 months. I started around 100% blue and 60% whites and now doing 100% blue and 30% whites.

Always heard that Kessils take care of the coral needs no matter what mix of blues and whites you go with?

Need to know if I can just run 100% blues (no whites)? Will all the coral get enough light to grow? Can they photosynthesize?

Recently got some expensive rainbow acans & chalices and was told they do best under blues...
 
Short answer. Don't do it. You need some white to balance out and get a well rounded spectrum. I'd keep it where you have it. When I first went to LEDs I did lots of blue and hardly any white and had lots of color shifting etc... Dif lights for sure but similar thing. You want some white for sure.
 
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By "do best under blue" that translates to "looks super duper awesome under blue" because those are the wavelength that excite those fluorescent pigments combined with the fact our eyes are not super sensitive to blue spectrums so the tank with look dark, then it becomes a matter of contrast of glowing things in a dark area so they look super duper awesome. Corals fluoresce when there's white light on too, it's just that the tank is so bright we don't tend to see it either.

Question is can you run 100% blue, sure you can, but why? While the Kessil does shift power when when you switch more to one spectrum than the other I don't think it shifts all the power, meaning both at 100% gives you more light output, more light = more energy for corals... as long as they aren't getting shocked from too much light.
 
I have had issues running straight blue without accompanying warmer/white energy (by energy, I mean wattage) and it was a disaster. I doubt you'd ever get this far but my colors took a crap also.
 
Thx guys. The colors pop so much under full actinics that I hate whites! I wish my fixture had timers for different spectrums so I had 100% all in the afternoon and just actinics in the evenings when I'm home :) (Thats one of the reasons I like MaxSpect & T247... A360 can do it but with a controller!)

I'm sure people here have rainbow corals (chalices, acans, palys)... do you keep them under shade? I've heard coloration is best at low PARs.
 
you can always manually put the bluer lights on when you get home from work, just remember to change it back before going to bed.

Not shade, but I do notice that my rainbow acans look more like orange acans on the top where they're being directly hit with light, and only around the rim where they're not hit directly by light do they have the multitude of colors.
 
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