LED lighting ab+ for AI Prime HD and Growth vs. Visual Appeal

[landlocked303]

One of the coolest and toughest part about LED's is the controllability with the intensity and spectrum. I've been looking for proven spectrum settings to use in my mixed reef that produces good growth with visual appeal in mind, but most focus is on growth for now. I looked up the ab+ settings that radion has released for SPS and LPS/Soft. It doesn't translate perfectly over to the AI Prime HD because the individual controls are slightly different.

I'll post the radion pics here and you can see that they only have UV, B, RB, W, G, R settings available.

The AI Prime HD also includes Violet... Should that Just be run at 100% like the other blues/purples?

Also, I've seen a lot of people use the term, "corals like blue." Insinuating that corals will grow well with bluer spectrums. I think people are meaning to say, "corals look better under blue spectrums but that doesn't translate into growth." Correct me if I'm wrong here, but corals just like any algae or plants probably grow faster under more red/yellow/white lighting (like the 10K or 6.5K T5 bulbs). Or could you have high growth with only blues?

I bring this up because these settings appear very blue and I had assumed they would be more red/yellow/white for growth. Maybe I'm just really confused and corals do grow quicker under bluer lights and also look better too. I really had thought they looked better under blue and grew quicker under red/yellow/white.

Any help with the AI Prime HD settings and clarification on growth vs. visual appeal would be great!

 

[macdave]

The corals like the blue side of the lighting spectrum due to the water filtering out the higher wavelength red, green and yellow colors before it reaches the depth the corals are at. As for the settings on the ai prime, I have the Red Sea max nano tank that came with this light, and recommendations on the the settings from Red Sea. I don’t shave a screenshot of the chart but here are the values they recommend:
UV 118
Vio 118
Royal 140
Blue 116
Green 0
Red 0
White 60

These should run for 4 hours with a 4 hour ramp time. Make you move to these values slowly as they will burn your corals if you go too fast.

 

[landlocked303]

The corals like the blue side of the lighting spectrum due to the water filtering out the higher wavelength red, green and yellow colors before it reaches the depth the corals are at. As for the settings on the ai prime, I have the Red Sea max nano tank that came with this light, and recommendations on the the settings from Red Sea. I don’t shave a screenshot of the chart but here are the values they recommend:
UV 118
Vio 118
Royal 140
Blue 116
Green 0
Red 0
White 60

These should run for 4 hours with a 4 hour ramp time. Make you move to these values slowly as they will burn your corals if you go too fast.

I appreciate this. What I'm wondering though is if those settings are simply for visual appeal or growth? Because the phrase, "corals like" doesn't imply one or the other. Does Red Sea explain why they recommend these settings? Is this for SPS, LPS, Soft corals or for all?

Thanks for responding though. Maybe I'm beating a dead horse, but no one seems interested in this post haha.

 

[macdave]

I appreciate this. What I'm wondering though is if those settings are simply for visual appeal or growth? Because the phrase, "corals like" doesn't imply one or the other. Does Red Sea explain why they recommend these settings? Is this for SPS, LPS, Soft corals or for all?

Thanks for responding though. Maybe I'm beating a dead horse, but no one seems interested in this post haha.

It’s for growth, but it doesn’t look bad to me. Your mileage may vary

I use it for all coral, just vary the placement based on lighting requirements.. I don’t have any soft coral though.

 

[landlocked303]

It’s for growth, but it doesn’t look bad to me. Your mileage may vary

I use it for all coral, just vary the placement based on lighting requirements.. I don’t have any soft coral though.

My AI Prime HD only has settings for
UV 119
Violet 116
Royal Blue 122
Blue 111

That's weird...

 

[macdave]

I haven’t made it up that far yet, I’m at 100 on all the blues and 35 on white. I raise it about 5 percent every 2-3 weeks. Right now my par reading is about 165 at the top of my rock work and 110 at the bottom of the tank.

 

[pluikens]

I agree with both the OP and macdave. It's my understanding that corals will grow best at a PAR they have adapted to, being sunlight filtered by everything it goes through on its way to the corals (clouds, air, water, etc.) This PAR is different depending on each type of coal and where it comes from. Since the corals don't get exposed to the higher end of the spectrum on account of the water filtering it out, they're not "tuned" to convert this energy into growth. Any visible light I shine at the coral is going to add to the PAR reading to help me get to that of the sun but since the corals don't use the full spectrum, that's not really all PAR for growth. I'd rather tune my lights to the spectrum that coral can use (around 450-500 nm) and then adjust the PAR to what the coral is used to. To me this is exposing the PAR meter to what the coral can use and then getting that reading. I want to have a long photoperiod of the highest PAR the corals want in the spectrum they want and I'd call that best for growth. For a few hours a day when I'm home and watching the tank, I might adjust the lights to what I find more appealing which would overall be a little more whiter.

 

[majority_rules]

I agree with both the OP and macdave. It's my understanding that corals will grow best at a PAR they have adapted to, being sunlight filtered by everything it goes through on its way to the corals (clouds, air, water, etc.) This PAR is different depending on each type of coal and where it comes from. Since the corals don't get exposed to the higher end of the spectrum on account of the water filtering it out, they're not "tuned" to convert this energy into growth. Any visible light I shine at the coral is going to add to the PAR reading to help me get to that of the sun but since the corals don't use the full spectrum, that's not really all PAR for growth. I'd rather tune my lights to the spectrum that coral can use (around 450-500 nm) and then adjust the PAR to what the coral is used to. To me this is exposing the PAR meter to what the coral can use and then getting that reading. I want to have a long photoperiod of the highest PAR the corals want in the spectrum they want and I'd call that best for growth. For a few hours a day when I'm home and watching the tank, I might adjust the lights to what I find more appealing which would overall be a little more whiter.

Why aren't the coral tuned into using higher wavelengths? Xoozanthellae use chlorophyll a which absorbs blue and red wavelengths the best. Red wavelength penetrates to about 100m. That's a lot of coral it passed along the way. To my knowledge if you are seeing red in anything in your tank that means the red wavelength is still penetrating the water because it's being reflected off of what is red. Or am I completely off base on this??

 

[fishrambo]

I change it up a lot to bring out the different colors of the coral. I also wonder about this topic.

 

[pluikens]

Why aren't the coral tuned into using higher wavelengths? Xoozanthellae use chlorophyll a which absorbs blue and red wavelengths the best. Red wavelength penetrates to about 100m. That's a lot of coral it passed along the way. To my knowledge if you are seeing red in anything in your tank that means the red wavelength is still penetrating the water because it's being reflected off of what is red. Or am I completely off base on this??

I'm not sure where you got that 100 meter number. From a document published by the Institute for Environment and Sustainability of the European Commission, for any wavelength of over 600nm no more than one percent of the intensity at the surface is present at just 25 meters deep. For those interested in color spectrum used in our tanks and the effects on the coral's appearance, I'd suggest reading a 2012 article by Dmitry Karpenko and Vahe Ganapetyan titled Light in the Reef Aquaria. It's pretty long and you can skip over the formulas if you're not into that but it's full of useful info when manually tuning lights. Here's a link: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2012/10/aafeature