Wonder if grow lights used in the cannabis industry have a study on the affects of UV lighting?
LED’s- No UV? Do corals need UV for longterm health?
- Thread starter Reefahholic
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You will have to assume some transitive property between corals and weed, but I live in Colorado and every single one of the commercial growers use HPS, MH, MV or other mercury based bulbs to grow their hippie lettuce - a few T5s but not many. Some use sunlight and supplement with fixtures. I did a work assignment recently and the yield and potency is better with mercury bulbs and they want both the UV and IR. They care about money and that is all, so performance is what they are after. Not a single one of the 17 places that I visited had any type of non-mercury lighting over their crop, but they did have some neat techno LED lights in their retail stores out front.
I think that you can somewhat use the transitive property to a degree. Emerson Effect seems to work. Green light penetrating tissue to provide nourishment deeper into tissue works. Nearly every protein is active in the UV range both in plants and also corals.
I think that you can somewhat use the transitive property to a degree. Emerson Effect seems to work. Green light penetrating tissue to provide nourishment deeper into tissue works. Nearly every protein is active in the UV range both in plants and also corals.
It was more comparison between plants and corals which most use photosynthesis to gain nutrition and for other health benefits …So I would assume there would be similarities. I’m not a expert by any means, just thought there might be new/fresh info out there with that “new” $$$ booming industry….
damsels are not mean
Valuable Member
Maybe, but we're not commercial growers. We're hobbyists. I'll stand by my suspicion that almost no hobbyists are limited by their lighting unless they're a newbie who doesn't know any better.
And commercial coral growers seem to mostly use LED or in some cases separate systems with LED and MH and T5 like battlecorals.
Until I see some data collected with variables controlled to suggest that UV is necessary to make corals lay down calcium or be more colorful I'm not going to be swayed. I feel like some corals are too colorful honestly. Some tanks look fake!
J1a
Well-Known Member
I believe flow is quite critical too! Not just the generic flow in the whole aquarium, but the boundary layer across the surface of the corals.
The biggest problem with flow measurment is, even if someone model the flow in a lab system, it's not really usable in another reefers aquarium. Unlike Par/spectrum readings, the flow can be so different between different setups.
The only wholesale commercial coral grower is still the ocean... either wild or in mass like mariculture. I would venture that all of the basement growers, and back rooms of stores cannot grow what gets imported in a few days from the ocean... a drop in the bucket.
I suggest that you look to nature for the starting point and then ask for proof that something present is not needed, rather than the other way around. Nobody feeds their fish dog food or McDonalds and then asks for proof that a diet similar to that of where they were collected is necessary.
The corals look fake because people care about color. If they had good color, either actual color, or from the hobbyist able to bring out the color in them, then heavy-blue LEDs would not be necessary.
I suggest that you look to nature for the starting point and then ask for proof that something present is not needed, rather than the other way around. Nobody feeds their fish dog food or McDonalds and then asks for proof that a diet similar to that of where they were collected is necessary.
The corals look fake because people care about color. If they had good color, either actual color, or from the hobbyist able to bring out the color in them, then heavy-blue LEDs would not be necessary.
damsels are not mean
Valuable Member
Really poor analogy. Corals grow well and color up under all lights. There has never been any data to suggest that UV is necessary for coral health nor that it is necessary for coloration nor growth. On the other hand, there have been thousands of beautiful tanks under all manner of artificial lighting, some with and without UV and many with really unnatural looking spectrum.
You want to look to nature? Whole lotta BROWN out there that never even touches wholesaler racks. Show me a coral in the ocean that's anywhere near as colorful as a lot of the popular strains that develop their color under artificial lights, UV or not. Many of the strains we have were nowhere near as colorful in the wild and have over the years become known for the vivid colors they develop under artificial lights. Additionally, some of the strains and species we collect come from water that is too deep for them to have ever needed significant UV light to grow or develop their "natural" colors. Our tanks are completely unnatural environments in almost every way.
Why "look to nature" with lighting, but not with tides? Many shallow water corals are exposed to air for hours at a time, but nobody is arguing we should drain our tanks half way in sync with the moon phases. I am not saying UV light can't be beneficial, but I am saying I have seen no actual data to support that idea, and "look to nature" is not enough because a fish tank is nothing like nature in any way.
Erasmus Crowley
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Some minor additions and/or corrections...
UVA causes human skin to rapidly darken in color by causing existing melanin to expand and cover more area. It also accelerates the aging of the skin.
UVB causes human skin to slowly darken in color by slowly increasing the total amount of melanin content. It is responsible for sunburns, as well as creating cholecalciferol (Vitamin D) from cholesterol based precursor molecules.
Tanning bed bulbs use lots of UVA, but very little UVB. This is because it allows customers to tan more often and for longer periods of time without a huge risk of severe burns.
Both UVA and UVB will cause DNA damage in skin cells.
Practically no UVC reaches the ground on our planet because it's almost completely filtered out by the atmosphere. Nothing uses it for any productive purpose, except for us I guess. We use it to kill microorganisms in UV sterilization systems.
Some interesting light reading: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3427189/
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