LED lighting variations

[TonapahNorth]

New to the hobby. I bought a nice LED light that I'm quite happy with. It is blue and white LED's. Should there be other colors?
I was thinking of getting a strip or two that offers a whole spectrum of colors. If it is recommended and I get the strips, what colors are recommended? Red, yellow, purple, magenta, blue? lol

Thoughts?

 

[Ron Reefman]

If the fixture you have has the right spectrum of blue and the right mix (ratio) of blue and white leds, you really don't need other colors. They may, and I mean MAY help with making your corals look a little bit better, but your corals really don't need much more than 440nm-360nm blue and the bit of red spectrum they get from your white leds (which are a wide range of spectrum). Some fixtures added red leds when they figured out that corals use some red spectrum in the photosynthesis process, but it's really more than they need. And the red mixed with the blue which made their fixtures look more purple than blue. So they added green which mixes with the red and blue to make white. Or at least white to our eyes, the corals still 'see' red, green and blue. Think about TV's which use RGB to make pictures, or stage lighting at a concert which use red, green and blue spotlights and when they mix, it looks white.

If you are interested, OceanRevive has a thread (with links to other sources) in their sponsor forum here on R2R that talks about light, lighting and coral. It's worth checking out:
https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/oc...ghting-how-coral-zooxanthellae-use-light.html

 

[TonapahNorth]

Excellent Ron! Thank you.