Best Light for Coral Color Pop

[SCH14]

What is everyone’s opinion on best coral color pop?

I’m thinking of using 2 kessil AP9x on my 96”. Maybe 3 G6 blues or something else to get more pop going? My 3 G6 blues don’t give much coral brightness and pop

 

[Spare time]

What about the kessils with reef Brite xho's on the side for the pop

 

[Smite]

Pop under what type of spectrum? Day or all blue? I ran xr30 g5 blues and the all blue pop was incredible and hard to mimic. Daylight spectrum or whiter spectrum might depend on what type coral you're keeping. I love Kessil for daylight. I'd describe them as lively with the shimmer they produce, spectrum is great too. I only ran the 360we, but the blue was flat and lacking IMO in comparison to the g5 blues. Granted the newer kessil's blue is probably more dynamic now but radion is hard to beat for that all blue pop. XHOs are pretty darn close though.

Pop can largely depend on husbandry. All blue pop can largely depend on orange glasses if you're looking to see what you see from vendor photos online as well.

 

[minus9]

Maybe add an LED bar or two like Quanta Pro (meso blue or OG pop).

 

[SCH14]

Pop under what type of spectrum? Day or all blue? I ran xr30 g5 blues and the all blue pop was incredible and hard to mimic. Daylight spectrum or whiter spectrum might depend on what type coral you're keeping. I love Kessil for daylight. I'd describe them as lively with the shimmer they produce, spectrum is great too. I only ran the 360we, but the blue was flat and lacking IMO in comparison to the g5 blues. Granted the newer kessil's blue is probably more dynamic now but radion is hard to beat for that all blue pop. XHOs are pretty darn close though.

Pop can largely depend on husbandry. All blue pop can largely depend on orange glasses if you're looking to see what you see from vendor photos online as well.

I run my g6 blues at 80% or so under 100% blues and 5-10% white plus red and violet around 30-80 during the day with UV maxed out most of the time. I feel that the pop isn’t there. I went to a friends house to buy a torch, there it was a really bright yellow under China black boxes, my house in a deeper tank was pretty mustard yellow

 

[Bpb]

What you speak of is pigment formation and display. The amazing colors you love will change in short time with any lighting change. Those colors are present or absent based on water chemistry, pathogenic involvement, flow, age in your system, and lastly light.

Either of the popular lighting choices you listed are nearly equally capable of bright color in corals. If the color isn’t to your liking, I would look elsewhere. Most popular led fixtures similar spectra diodes in their lights. Some combination of lots of royal blue, some light blue in the 480nm range, a bit of violet and near uv, some white of varying warmth in kelvin, and then some red and green which most people don’t even end up using really. Jumping from one to another isn’t likely to produce dramatic results. Lights are more similar than they are different

 

[jda]

Your corals have to have nice colors to be popped.

Full daylight renders the best colors in corals. Most like heavier blue to show them off, but many look great under daylight alone once you get them there. Something like 14-20k can both make corals look good and also show them off well.

Think of daylight like exercise, good diet, health care, skin care, etc. Heavy blue is thick makeup, big hair, spanx, etc. Both together can be good, but if you let the first go, the second will not be able to make things look great for long.

 

[Bpb]

Your corals have to have nice colors to be popped.

Full daylight renders the best colors in corals. Most like heavier blue to show them off, but many look great under daylight alone once you get them there. Something like 14-20k can both make corals look good and also show them off well.

Think of daylight like exercise, good diet, health care, skin care, etc. Heavy blue is thick makeup, big hair, spanx, etc. Both together can be good, but if you let the first go, the second will not be able to make things look great for long.

Stellar analogy

 

[jda]

People can also just have ulgy corals. This is why names and lineage are so important. For example, true GARF Bonsais acropora looks amazing and should shine and pop like crazy if you give it enough white light - there are many other purple/green acropora that people call GARF that will never look that good. I never wish ugly corals on anybody, but it happens.

Most of the time, people bring corals home and they look good under heavy blue. After a while, they don't look so good. This is almost always because they old owner had them under more daylight and they had better rendered color. The blue at the new home was showing off the rendered color well, but that rendered color disappeared over time.

If all coral that you bring home looks worse, then you have a problem. One or two will always look better in other tanks, so best to let this go if the masses all look good. Sometimes you need red to show off red (and blues), green and yellow to show off other colors.

Go and find thermans threads. He runs his LEDs at/hear 100% on all channels. Look at his colors. This is not possible under a heavy blue light schedule.