BRS Investigates suggestion - do Red and Green wavelengths promote the outbreak of unwanted Algae or Cyanobacteria...?

salty150 · Jun 22, 2020

Have a BRS Investigates suggestion that I think A LOT of reefers would love to know the answer.

Red Sea states in its literature that "Red and Green wavelengths are not recommended for use in Reef systems as they may promote the outbreak of unwanted Algae or Cyanobacteria."

If, indeed, red and green LEDs that are included in almost all popular LED fixtures today are causing problems with Algae and/or Cyano - that would be huge information.

Red Sea's new Reef Lights do not contain red and green LEDs - so I am guessing there really might be something to it.

In any event - this "investigation" would be extremely valuable.

Michael Curtis · Jun 22, 2020

Would be interested to see the results of this

Its brings up the question of why there in the fixtures to begin with may be old school natural light spectrums I suspect

Also on a side note what about uv and violet spectrums and benefits for and agenst, is there a benefit or just a fad ?

WvAquatics · Jun 22, 2020

Well from my limited knowledge. You can remove straight red lights but the white will add some red to the spectrum. Green is to balance out the color for our viewing. Uv and violet are mainly color pop. Corals need the right blue spectrum for health and growth.

blasterman · Jun 22, 2020

More nonsense.

There is no commercial LED fixture that is just blue wavelengths, including Red Sea. White LEDs contain quite a bit of green and a tad bit of orange red. A reef light devoid of any orange or red would be monochromatic. Some softie freaks run blue only for actinic effect, but they are the exception.

Classic 10-14k halides and T5s have a lot of green as well. If anything most LED fixtures have less green than the classic fixtures and more far red because wavelengths longer than 630nm are problematic with T5 and halides but easy to produce with LED.

Go ahead and try and treat a bad cyano outbreak running just your blue channel. See how well that works out.

Shallow reefs also contain a fair amount of warm spectrum. Typically much more than our reef tanks because we prefer more actinic pop. Basically the Red Sea marketing dept is saying the sun is the wrong spectrum for growing coral.

salty150 · Jun 22, 2020

So let's have a BRS Investigation - to see whether the green and red LEDs have an impact on the problems or not.

There was a time when a lot people thought that LEDs would not be that good at growing corals too - and they were wrong.

There was a time when a lot of people (including some who claimed to be "in the know") thought that these bacterial cycle-starters were just "snake-oil" - and they were wrong.

Only way to find out what is what - is to test it.