LED cause browning or bleaching?

juicesay · Dec 9, 2010

I'm sure water quality takes a role in this in conjunction with the lighting effects.

johnanddawn · Dec 9, 2010

LEDs are funny in my short 4 month experience
the hot spots people talk about are VERY real but optics play a huge role in that. the tighter your optics the more pronounced these effects will be. i have burnt corals up in one spot and a couple inches away the next coral looks amazing - its perplexing
i have some corals (the vast majority thankfully) where i have found the right spot and they are just amazing in growth and coloration, but for a few corals i haven't found the right spot and can't get color or growth - still much too learn
personally i have not had any problems with browning, always the other way too much light. acclimation is extremely important and must be done carefully. it took months for some of my sps too adjust but when they do- they have wow!

many talk about spectrum and that is real as well - LEDs by nature produce a very specific wavelength. fortunetly the blue/royal blue spectrum is just what most zooxanthelea want

browning out of corals in my experince has far less to do with light then nutrients and flow. but the good side of that is brown corals usually don't die. it is far easier to make a few corrections and allow time for a brown coral to recover then a bleached one. bleached corals die (sometimes very quickly) if corrections are not made and even then its a tough battle to bring them back.

bottom line for me is like i said - i have much to learn about led's. i am completely sold on them but realize that they are not the plug and play system that T5's or MH are. anyone can put a nice MH/T5 light set on a tank and be successful. does this mean that T5/MH systems are better, well i guess that is a matter of opinion. imo one must be willing to experiment to learn and i am learning new things every day

juicesay · Dec 10, 2010

Well there are some brands that are a bit ahead of their time, so I wouldn't rule the LED's out just yet.

OMG Corals · Dec 11, 2010

I have also experienced some bleaching with leds. I have found the hotspots to be true and with the combination of carbon dosing the corals can bleach and even recede. I started dosing aminos and vit. c and it has helped alot. Also feeding much more heavily lately and the corals are coming back nicely. I did aclimate them to the light but, may have not done it slow enough. I think it's a matter of nutrient and light shock combined.

juicesay · Dec 13, 2010

Yea I definitely had to turn down my LED's from 80% to 40/50% since the light was so intense.
I've tested 100% and my gosh, it's sooo intense, I think it's enough to be brighter than the sun itself!

goody · Dec 13, 2010

Unfortunately, I didn't buy the dimmer option with my fixtures, beginning to think that was a mistake. So what I've done is placed a mini colony of my red planet further down in tank and in different side to see if it improves. The mother colony is really the only coral that is brown. In fact, most of my coral have improved in color. Now, I recently read a thread about too much flow for Red Planets. I do have mine about 2 ft. away from my mp40, but it is in direct line, could this be the cause for the browning, and not the lights?

Troylee · Jan 12, 2011

Any updates on this???? Curious the outcome this far....

luke33 · Jan 12, 2011

I've been running LED's only for about a year now. Its funny you mention the RP as thats the only coral i've had issue's with. I have two mini colonies and both are experiencing very diff growth and color. One is encrusting over the rock with small branches coming out everywhere, bright red encrust and the tips of the branches are white and pink. No green at all. This basically tells me its getting to much light. The other is just not responding to more intense light as its bleaching and i had to move it far away from the light. Its only getting around 130 par in the corner instead of 450. The other thing about led's is i don't know how much usable par they have compared to a mh. IME it seems they have more usable par, but thats just my opinion : ) Other than that i've had excellent growth and i've ran any and every kind of light besides the plasma.

goody · Jan 12, 2011

Troylee said:
Any updates on this???? Curious the outcome this far....

I continue to see great color and growth in most of my coral except for the RP and Raspberry Limeade. I am getting some growth, but it has slowed and still quite brown. The RP is showing some signs of green around the base, but not much. I added some rocks so I did a little reaquascaping and took this opportunity to move some coral around. I'll try and take some top down shots, but I can't figure out how to take good ones without getting the reflection of the lights.