Oh yeah! Beautiful dogs! Love them!! Don't forget the treat! Tell them it's from uncle Grandis!@90's reefer - I could spend all day in front of the reef with my nose pressed up against the glass. I've been accused of that on occasion by someone else in this household...
Here's another pic - of my little old lady Bella - a 13 yr "young" Belgian Groenendael with Norman, a 6 yr old Boxer-Lab mix at her side. I've had Belgians in my life since the mid 80s in Athens GR. Once you have them in your life, you can't really let go.
Cheers,
Ray
Did you use only daylight fluorescent over that Pocillopora? What bulb exactly? GE65K?@shred5 - I get what you're saying about UV exposure, but I think you also need to plug human perception of color into the equation. Also, if you're running a double envelope halide (such as a mogul base or one that has a UV filtering glass as directed for HQI use), you really shouldn't see a pigment shift due to UV. If you do, you should also be wearing eye protection - really.
Here's a shot of my Pocillpora damicornis I donated to our club's Frag Fest in early 2019 (another Pocillopora is at the back of the bin). The color of this coral under these daylight fluorescents is patently rose, or dark pink to some.
Here's the same coral under my LEDs - a much different result.
Yeh, it went through a pretty heavy growth period in a couple months, one of the reasons I decided the club could make better use of it than I at that stage. If you look closely at some of the pics above you should be able to spot a couple "little tykes" started from really small frags of that coral after that club event.
So, while I suspect the fluorescent lighting at the Johns Hopkins APL cafeteria is daylight, I'd wager that I didn't (and probably still don't) have a lot of green in my lighting so the rose coloration didn't show, or was possibly masked by the chromate green. Is this a bad thing? Don't know. Is it truly reflective of what it would look like if I raised it in a greenhouse? Got me. I've tried for years to get authorization to build a greenhouse between the house and the barn with no success so far. I've even offered to turn over half to year-round vegetable gardening. No luck. Yet...
This is a fun hobby, and we hopefully learn something new every day. I just wish I had more time to play with it.
Cheers,
Ray
My apologies for the content of my system. We are not allowed to keep any hard corals. This is the only thing I can have legally here!
People like you should know what you are doing, right? Nice tank. Like I've said many times, I have many friends with amazing tanks using LEDs only. We don't fight about lighting. They ask me what I think their tank would look like under halides or T5s, but they don't change. And that is fine.
Newbies follow the trend. I'm sure, like you, many of the LED users didn't get exactly what I've been trying to propose all these years. I tried to expose in this tread again and again, but perhaps some of you are so focused in defending the "LED wagon" and put all the efforts in the other side of discussion. Bob Goemans was right when he told you halides were better than T5s, but it will depend on what results you want! The results are different. Did you get it now?
If you use halides over your tank the results will be different and you should know that by now! Do you have to change? NO!
I careless what type of lights people choose. I don't like the fact that halides have been diminished and LEDs are maximized using it as a step! Did you get it now? Selling LEDs gives moves more profit, but that shouldn't have to prohibit halide users to choose what they want to use.The market needs to be fair. All excuse they use aren't true, but what we see published.
The only reason why there are threads like this is because of the fake news of the market. This was the first time (as far as I remember) they published the unfair comparison. From there, most companies decided they would go for the easy extra money the trend would follow:
LED people learn here! How many times I've said that LEDs will need to cover most of the surface area of the tank to give you the best results.@nereefpat - The aquarium is a 300 gallon Deep Dimension with corner overflows. Foot print is 72" X 36" and water depth is about 27". This is not a cheap, inexpensive, plug and play solution, but rather one that I've tailored to meet my wants and needs.
The LED fixtures are 2X 165W and 4X 300W ViparSpectra. Decent spectrum and array. These are mounted perpendicular to the rear of the aquarium, with the 165W one each end - no need to light the overflows. I used shred5's recommended approach to panel LEDs by covering as much surface area as possible while allowing (tradeoff) for the my preferred inclusion of Kessil A360WEs. I removed the 90' focusing lenses from the ViparSpectra to increase color blending (native lenses are 120') as I wasn't worried about PAR levels and wanted to increase spread a smidge at the same time. I then covered the face glass with an acrylic light diffusion lens to produce basically a large, solid band of well-blended light. It's good to see manufacturers starting to do this in my opinion.
Please note I run this ViparSpectra array at 50% power level so I don't bleach coral. Been there, done that, and I'm still sad at the number of corals I lost because I didn't use a PAR meter to establish a baseline. And before the question is asked, yes, you can bleach coral with blue light. Another experiment I'd rather not repeat.
I supplement these (or vice versa) with six Kessil A360WE with intensity on full and their spectrum swung all the way over to the daylight side. If you look in the pictures up thread, these are place basically along the front edge (3) and rear edge (3) of the aquarium, and provide coverage to the entire reef. I run these for 5-6 hours mid day and they provide a boost of about 100-150 PAR during that period.
Along the lines of shred5's comments on UV above, there are things corals do to protect themselves from too much photosynthesis, and light-blocking pigmentation is one of them. I provide a period of "over the top" lighting to hopefully encourage this additional pigmentation, while allowing for over half of the illuminated period for "normal" photosynthesis levels of 300-350 PAR, where great growth rates hover around for the majority of photosynthetic coral I've plugged into this reef. I tend to give away frags to club members that are willing to come by and pick them up sometimes for a donation of frag plugs, and local shops as well (they reimburse me for the plugs, too, tho). Might as well put them to good use.
As an aside, the Tridacnid research paper I referenced many miles upthread truly is fascinating. It details how symbionts in the clam's mantle produce guanine crystals to shift the UV light spectrum from damaging wavelengths to those useful for photosynthesis. This also has a visible effect on the mantle's appearance. It really does make for good reading.
I hope this helps.
Cheers,
Ray
Most LED boxes will give you somehow different results in color, very slightly. I like black boxes much better than any other hype LED in the market.
It would be great if all the LED users would follow that. BUT the mentality today to save money instead investing in the technology you choose! That is another wrong trend going on that needs to stop!!
Hawaii.
There is the best light for what you want to achieve though!!!
I feel the same ..
Above is the same tank under T5s. I have this system since 2008. As you can see the results are very different. I absolutely love T5s!!!
That is true! For me I’d have to say the AI Prime is probably the best bang for your buck as far as small tanks are concerned. For large tanks I’d say it’s the ReefBreeders
Thanks Ray! Bob was a great guy!!!@A. grandis - Please read my posts a little more carefully, and I'm sorry for not being more explicit in my writing style. re: "Bob Goemans was right when he told you halides were better than T5s, but it will depend on what results you want! The results are different. Did you get it now?" I was the one actually coming down on the side of metal halide, not Bob. I built my own starters (you know, with the big old transformer and capacitor, referred to as an M80 these days) with the help of the local warehouse lighting supplier. Yeh, halides were used for aisle lighting in warehouses, and still are on occasion. As I said, I used them for many years. My decisions weren't based on my wallet, but the health and appearance of the animals under my care.
With ref to the Pocillopora above: no, it was grown under Black Boxes, and the photograph was taken under one as well.
That's an amazing zoa collection, by the way.
I do hope that someday "metal halide people" can learn here as well.
Sorry about the Hawaii stony coral issues. Hope the trade and the statehouse figures it out sometime.
Cheers,
Ray
Toshiba 3 crt projection..Mitsubishi DLP...Visio M (90 local dim spots)? I think..@oreo5457 - I still remember my old Toshiba DLP quite fondly. I replaced the bulb (came in it's own holder) once before I went to an LED big screen in mid/late 2000's. It still hurt taking it to electronics recycling a few years ago as it still worked, just not as well as the new screen. It certainly was worth the investment for a number of years, though.
Cheers,
Ray
I know that isn't the answer most want to hear but you will need to light your tank according to size and what you plan on keeping and especially your BUDGET.You forgot the best part.. WHAT did you replace the 4 @ 110w max not including dimming the white (84.3W w/ white at 25%) channel with?This was my tank right after switching from Black Boxes to all T5's so yes, it can be done.
Again, I think the correct answer is not which light is best but which light is best for your tank size and what you plan on keeping.
