Blue or white light for soft corals

[Benji k]

I have always had my light as blue as I could get it but all my corals are soft corals and I hear that people say if you have soft corals you should change your light to mainly white is this true my light is basically fully blue should I add more white in there or leave it

 

[Spare time]

So in practice, it doesn't matter. Ideally you would run both, but they will be fine either way (albeit only white is a bit innefficient for coral growth).

 

[Subsea]

Actually, in the world of led lights:, while light is composed of red, greeen & blue..

I don’t use heavy blue because it washes out red & yellows. The reason most reefers go blue is to favor coral rather than algae. I prefer to look at 10:000 Kevin co.or spectrum in my display.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Personally I have never heard that in almost 20 years of reefing and I would disregard it. The explanations are above.

 

[Doctorgori]

Agree…
Pictures of my Reef 25yrs+ ago, WARNING very white

 

[Benji k]

Agree…
Pictures of my Reef 25yrs+ ago, WARNING very white

Is that natural light and and is it always white the polyps look very extended my soft corals aren’t looking to good latley what do you keep your nitrates at because my sinularia is starting to deteriorate

 

[Doctorgori]

Is that natural light and and is it always white the polyps look very extended my soft corals aren’t looking to good latley what do you keep your nitrates at because my sinularia is starting to deteriorate

Those are Horticultural grade Metal Halide 4800K …
Also be advised a LOT of lighting misinformation is passed on by the “post” MH generation that never lit thier tanks white …dont believe the hype LOL…

I’m on the fence about nitrates…my tanks run between 25 - 50 … I am about to give up trying to keep them lower as Im not seeing any negatives…
Honestly nobody has proven high nitrates are absolutely a bad thing…

 

[Benji k]

Those are Horticultural grade Metal Halide 4800K …
Also be advised a LOT of lighting misinformation is passed on by the “post” MH generation that never lit thier tanks white …dont believe the hype LOL

Ok ill add some white to the tank and what do you keep your parameters

 

[Subsea]

Is that natural light and and is it always white the polyps look very extended my soft corals aren’t looking to good latley what do you keep your nitrates at because my sinularia is starting to deteriorate

In general:
5000 Kevin is a Caribbean reef at noon

6500 Kevin is 5pm

10,000 Kevin is late afternoon

 

[Doctorgori]

Ok ill add some white to the tank and what do you keep your parameters

Well unfortunately my tanks are blue as h3ll … two are in a hallway and bright white light makes the surrounding furniture, painting, et look like poo… Also I have mostly “green” varieties of sinularia, devils hand and toadstools, so

I need to crank the blue up to show them off..
Not a fan of windex but sometimes it cant be helped…

Some of the people here already know how to light their tanks white and still pop the oranges and greens…
TBH I set my lights at whatever I need per ambient light or to mitigate TV glare or whatever…

Corals adapt eventually and I “fire and forget” and rarely monkey around after the initial setting; whatever that might be…

Honestly I would set the tank to your preference and let the corals adjust to that… some of the AB stuff might be correct but it also gets a lil “much” for me also

 

[Daz_1978]

In all honesty, it's mostly preference... as white light has all the colors of the rainbow (literally).

The old metal halide tanks had mostly white light and the shimmer was amazing!
I like the 'blacklight' effect of the blue lights. A plus to the blues is that they hide other colors, so if you have algae on the rocks... it's less noticeable. However your clownfish won't look as pretty.

PS. Speaking of color and light... there's no such thing as purple!

 

[Subsea]

Well unfortunately my tanks are blue as h3ll … two are in a hallway and bright white light makes the surrounding furniture, painting, et look like poo… Also I have mostly “green” varieties of sinularia, devils hand and toadstools, so

I need to crank the blue up to show them off..
Not a fan of windex but sometimes it cant be helped…

Some of the people here already know how to light their tanks white and still pop the oranges and greens…
TBH I set my lights at whatever I need per ambient light or to mitigate TV glare or whatever…

Corals adapt eventually and I “fire and forget” and rarely monkey around after the initial setting; whatever that might be…

Honestly I would set the tank to your preference and let the corals adjust to that… some of the AB stuff might be correct but it also gets a lil “much” for me also

Kudos to this post.

Display tank lighting ascetics are determined by the operator. I like 10,000 Kevin.

On seaweed growout tanks I use 5000 Kevin.