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- Aug 24, 2019
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From what I've seen on research about photosynthesis, the chemical process can glitch, using a molecule of O2 instead of CO2. The process works as normal, except instead of O2 as a byproduct, you get reactive Oxygen products, which the organism, plant or coral, has to expend energy to deal with as it builds up. The theory that I've heard is that the more it builds up, the more energy the coral expends just keeping it at bay. By allowing intermittent clouds, or dips in peak lighting, you give the coral a chance to catch up on processing those chemicals out, opening up the metabolic resources to focus on growing when the light ramps up again.Interesting observation. I'm in - I just turned clouds on my Kessil 360x. It really just supplements my T-5s so it'll probably have little effect either way.
I'm happy to try it, but I'm struggling to understand why it should work.
-Does constant light variance excite the SPS to grow toward it at a faster rate?
-Are we just pumping out too much par in general and this helps tamper down the light?
-BRS investigates - does cloud coverage increase growth (at this point, we don't have a large sample size).
Hey Chaswood, wanna switch tanks with me? Haha.
To clarify, because i'm constantly nervous i've not gotten my point across, imagine you're climbing a rope. Hanging on to it, your goal is to climb upwards, but as time goes by, the rope lowers. Every hour of daylight, you're able to climb six feet of rope, representing growth. Every hour the rope lowers by 1 foot, and for every consecutive hour of light, the rope lowers an additional foot, representing the build up of these reactive Oxygen products. Hour 1, you make good headway, a net gain of 5 feet. Hour 2, less distance covered, at a net gain of 4 feet. By hour six, all your effort is going into making sure you're not losing height, which in this case represents coral bleaching.