Faster Growth with Lower Light?

[merereef]

I watched a dana video on macna and he mentioned you get faster growth with lower light... is this really true? I see many aquarists mwntion higher light will give you faster growth.. im not doibting @Dana Riddle hes a legend. Im just curious as to why there is conflicting info?? Could nutrients/alk with high/low light be taking in to consideration? Mike paletta mentioned sanjay joshi who runs very high light with high nutrients and alk and has the fastest growing corals hes ever seen

 

[Malifry97]

@Dana Riddle

 

[vetteguy53081]

If be interested to hear more on this

 

[xxkenny90xx]

Following

 

[Bpb]

He’s talking about one specific species of coral in that video. Nowhere does he say ALL corals grow better in lower light than they are presently receiving no matter what that would be. He’s comparing a specific type of porites found in different depths. The specifics of that coral can’t be laterally applied to all corals. Every coral will have certain clades of zoox which will have various ranges of photosaturation. It all depends on the particular species of interest.

 

[A. grandis]

I think you're confused, Bpb.
Paletta was talking about Sanjay's Acropora species, like A. humilis and A. samoensis, in that video referring to fast growth.

Metal Halide and T5 Grow Corals Better Than LED and Cost Less

Ha. Show me a good looking tank with MH, I will show you 10 with LEDs. My point being that you can fabricate a story and find enough videos and testimonies to validate your claim. One can argue until they're blue in the face one light fixture over the other. It always boils down to personal...

www.reef2reef.com

Sanjay was the one talking about his yellow Porites loosing color after he changed from 400W 14000K Ushios to the Radion G4s.

Metal Halide and T5 Grow Corals Better Than LED and Cost Less

You can exceed "sunlight" "PAR" w/ many lights.. Secondly "natural" "PAR" varies throughout the day (even on cloudless skies) The DLI is important.. https://reefs.com/magazine/light-data-from-a-hawaiian-tidepool/

www.reef2reef.com

Unless that was in another video?
Very interesting subject.

 

[Bpb]

I think you're confused, Bpb.
Paletta was talking about Sanjay's Acropora species, like A. humilis and A. samoensis, in that video referring to fast growth.

Metal Halide and T5 Grow Corals Better Than LED and Cost Less

Ha. Show me a good looking tank with MH, I will show you 10 with LEDs. My point being that you can fabricate a story and find enough videos and testimonies to validate your claim. One can argue until they're blue in the face one light fixture over the other. It always boils down to personal...

www.reef2reef.com

Sanjay was the one talking about his yellow Porites loosing color after he changed from 400W 14000K Ushios to the Radion G4s.

Metal Halide and T5 Grow Corals Better Than LED and Cost Less

You can exceed "sunlight" "PAR" w/ many lights.. Secondly "natural" "PAR" varies throughout the day (even on cloudless skies) The DLI is important.. https://reefs.com/magazine/light-data-from-a-hawaiian-tidepool/

www.reef2reef.com

Unless that was in another video?
Very interesting subject.

Different video. It was one of the macna talks he gave and discussed a porites species exhibited stunted growth in tide pools versus specimens found deeper in lower light. I’ll hunt for a link tomorrow

 

[A. grandis]

But that was Dana's, wasn't it?

I was confused.. got it.
Both Sanjay and Dana talked about Porites.

 

[A. grandis]

I watched a dana video on macna and he mentioned you get faster growth with lower light... is this really true? I see many aquarists mwntion higher light will give you faster growth.. im not doibting @Dana Riddle hes a legend. Im just curious as to why there is conflicting info?? Could nutrients/alk with high/low light be taking in to consideration? Mike paletta mentioned sanjay joshi who runs very high light with high nutrients and alk and has the fastest growing corals hes ever seen

Could you please post a link of the video you're talking about?

 

[A. grandis]

Here in this another great video! Dana explains the relationship between colors, ultraviolet, and high intensity, on different proteins. Also, effects of pH and metals on fluorescence.
That's why the combination of placement, spectrum (PAR) and photoperiod is so important keeping systems with different species, specially using higher intensity.

There is a thread where he will post more about of UV-A and IR radiation.

Importance of UV-A and Infrared Radiation

This thread will examine the importance of UV-A and IR radiation the photosynthetic process as well as color coloration. Let's start with a new device from Apogee Instruments: https://www.apogeeinstruments.com/extended-range-pfd-sensors/

www.reef2reef.com

 

[merereef]

Here in this another great video! Dana explains the relationship between colors, ultraviolet, and high intensity, on different proteins. Also, effects of pH and metals on fluorescence.
That's why the combination of placement, spectrum (PAR) and photoperiod is so important keeping systems with different species, specially using higher intensity.

There is a thread where he will post more about of UV-A and IR radiation.

Importance of UV-A and Infrared Radiation

This thread will examine the importance of UV-A and IR radiation the photosynthetic process as well as color coloration. Let's start with a new device from Apogee Instruments: https://www.apogeeinstruments.com/extended-range-pfd-sensors/

www.reef2reef.com

 

[merereef]

He’s talking about one specific species of coral in that video. Nowhere does he say ALL corals grow better in lower light than they are presently receiving no matter what that would be. He’s comparing a specific type of porites found in different depths. The specifics of that coral can’t be laterally applied to all corals. Every coral will have certain clades of zoox which will have various ranges of photosaturation. It all depends on the particular species of interest.

I see, the title of the video is turbo charge photosynthesis and he goes over 3 main things, lighting, alkalinity and flow.. i thought he was using porites as an example.. didnt think the video was about porites corals ONLY... as thats not what the title of the video suggests.. maybe @Dana Riddle can clear this up

 

[Bpb]

I see, the title of the video is turbo charge photosynthesis and he goes over 3 main things, lighting, alkalinity and flow.. i thought he was using porites as an example.. didnt think the video was about porites corals ONLY... as thats not what the title of the video suggests.. maybe @Dana Riddle can clear this up

Right. I think the takeaway, or at least how I interpret the video, is more light doesn’t always mean faster growth. Yes people have historically over lit corals and we now realize less light is often needed to reach photosaturation. Not necessarily that all corals grow faster in low light. I could have misinterpreted your original post though.

An observation in my own tank:
Many of my sps do in fact grow faster when receiving 200 or so par. But...their colors tend to suffer. When I hit many with 500+ par, the growth may slow down a touch, but the colors become so much more vibrant which I assume are protective pigments from excess light. But that also isn’t a blanket statement that universally applies to every coral in the tank. Just observed it with several. Some tend to look and grow the same no matter what conditions I keep them in

 

[merereef]

Right. I think the takeaway, or at least how I interpret the video, is more light doesn’t always mean faster growth. Yes people have historically over lit corals and we now realize less light is often needed to reach photosaturation. Not necessarily that all corals grow faster in low light. I could have misinterpreted your original post though.

An observation in my own tank:
Many of my sps do in fact grow faster when receiving 200 or so par. But...their colors tend to suffer. When I hit many with 500+ par, the growth may slow down a touch, but the colors become so much more vibrant which I assume are protective pigments from excess light. But that also isn’t a blanket statement that universally applies to every coral in the tank. Just observed it with several. Some tend to look and grow the same no matter what conditions I keep them in

Thank you very much, this was very helpful.. i have heard a few sps keepers say the same thing that they got better colours when given more par!

 

[Drew Halliday]

There are tons of pigments corals use such as chlorophyll-A, chlorophyll-B, beta-carotene. They are present in different amounts based on the coral and the symbiotic algae in corals. This can vary in response to light and other factors even in two frags of the same specimen.

Two lights with the same PAR can look very different to corals. It all depends if that color or wavelength of light can be used by the specific photosynthetic pigments present in the corals.

If a coral cannot use the light because there is too much to handle or it cannot absorb that part of light it has to create non-photosynthetic pigments to protect it self from the light. This is a waste of the corals efforts.

 

[Dana Riddle]

That project examined only Porites lobata specimens, which contains clade C15 zoox. C15 is specific to Porites and is not found in any other zoox genera. With that said, the photosaturation point of C15 is not that much different than many other zoox clades. As a general statement, photosaturation is reached in many corals at PPFD of ~200 to ~400. If the coral animal can produce fluorescent/non-fluorescent proteins, this occurs when the saturation point is reached. This is universally applicable however. There are some fluorescent proteins that are not produced in response to light intensity (some of these are the DsRed proteins originally isolated from Discosoma false corals.) As a final note, production of colorful proteins does not come at much of an energetic cost - Dr. Mikhail Matz described their production as being 'cheap.'

 

[Bpb]

That project examined only Porites lobata specimens, which contains clade C15 zoox. C15 is specific to Porites and is not found in any other zoox genera. With that said, the photosaturation point of C15 is not that much different than many other zoox clades. As a general statement, photosaturation is reached in many corals at PPFD of ~200 to ~400. If the coral animal can produce fluorescent/non-fluorescent proteins, this occurs when the saturation point is reached. This is *not* universally applicable however. There are some fluorescent proteins that are not produced in response to light intensity (some of these are the DsRed proteins originally isolated from Discosoma false corals.) As a final note, production of colorful proteins does not come at much of an energetic cost - Dr. Mikhail Matz described their production as being 'cheap.'

May seem insignificant but I’m pretty excited to have interpreted the study correctly (or so it appears)

 

[Jordan Prather]

High light, low light, blue light, white light. Seems no one can ever agree on what works best when it comes to lights. Some people blast acros with 500 plus par with leds while others give the same piece with the same light and spectrum150 par and both of them will say that theirs grows the fastest. Then color now every one is saying blue light grows corals way faster while in the days of halides the lower kelvin was said to grow way faster it all gets so confusing.

 

[Bpb]

High light, low light, blue light, white light. Seems no one can ever agree on what works best when it comes to lights. Some people blast acros with 500 plus par with leds while others give the same piece with the same light and spectrum150 par and both of them will say that theirs grows the fastest. Then color now every one is saying blue light grows corals way faster while in the days of halides the lower kelvin was said to grow way faster it all gets so confusing.

Problem is so many of the people advising are not qualified to advise, nor are they qualified to perform or interpret research. Nor are their own personal trials controlled enough or long enough to yield any sort of logical conclusion. There’s no scientific method with this stuff in the hobby unfortunately, outside of a few very experienced individuals that are most often misunderstood and misinterpreted by the readers on the forum. The fact that everyone gets a voice means most information out there ends up being wrong, or at least groundless opinion.

 

[Jordan Prather]

Problem is so many of the people advising are not qualified to advise, nor are they qualified to perform or interpret research. Nor are their own personal trials controlled enough or long enough to yield any sort of logical conclusion. There’s no scientific method with this stuff in the hobby unfortunately, outside of a few very experienced individuals that are most often misunderstood and misinterpreted by the readers on the forum. The fact that everyone gets a voice means most information out there ends up being wrong, or at least groundless opinion.

Couldnt agree more I've been in the hobby for 2 and a half years done well over a couple hundred hours of reading in regards to coral fish and marine keeping and still feel like I only know .001% feel bad for even newer people that cant figure out anything because of all the "online experts" having their opinions heard way more then actual expert knowledge. I finally quit trying set my lights to a spectrum I like it might not be perfect but I enjoy it and my corals sre are not dying. Sure I'd like for it to grow quicker and I see people with more growth in 1 month then I get in a year but it is what it is at this point. Just gonna let the tank settle work on getting nutrients lower and let everything adjust and see what happens.