Do these lights exist?

[FishMann410]

Getting back into the hobby after almost 20ys. LEDs are completely new to me. I have a 240g on order. I am still debating if I want to go fowlr or reef. If fish only, I would eventually transition to a reef.

Are there any fixtures that will give me both worlds? That is a nice white light with no blue, but the option to switch them on. My hope is to buy something nice once.

Also why is everything suspended above the tank these days? Can I not just lay these on top of the tank like the strip lights of old? This tank will be in the living room and I'd like to avoid light in our eyes.

Thanks.

 

[fishywishy]

Pretty much every reef light can have the blues turned off and only have white. But you’ll have a lot of algae problems that way.

a good light for you would be a Fluval 3.0 or 4.0. They’re cheap, can grow corals, and lay on top of the tank like you want.

 

[Waters]

As stated all of the decent LED fixtures are spectrum controllable. Even the cheaper black box LEDs have manual controls to shut off just the blues or whites independantly. Most are hung above the tank to get better light distribution and to eliminate the disco effect that LED lights can give.

 

[ReneReef]

First off, you don’t need the blue look to successfully keep and grow corals.
And, no, running less blue will not cause algae problems. That is just nonsense.

The problem with keeping all options open is that you may end up dimming down a large part of a light’s output power. Output you paid for but end up not using.

Maybe high power freshwater LED lights could be the thing for you.
For instance GHL Mitras daylight. Such lights will grow corals just fine and they contain some blue for a blue looking morning and evening. You could later add some extra blue-violet strip lights if you end up getting corals and desire more fluorescent pop.

Or something else than LED, I’m using plasma lights (very daylight yellow) with some additional blue striplights. Look up seancj’s magnifica under plasma thread to get an impression of what that looks like.