LED Supplement experiment - Supplementing with Incandescent heat lamps to improve coral growth

[chcgregg]

I was running just cheap black boxes for the 1st half of the contest, then moved to a larger tank and switched to hydra 26s (and won another as the contest prize). Now I run orphek. I strongly feel that lights get too much blame for colors and growth.

That's interesting! Did you have many hydras running over your tank? I can't seem to access your growth winning link in your bio, would love to read it! Feel free to send a message.

One thing I am noticing with what your are saying is that those lights you are using have very good spread on them, as would a very good halide reflector, and T5 naturally. And another thing is that these point source LED's are extremely directional, such as Kessil and a few others. Maybe in the shaded areas the zoox are present in a higher density and aren't photosynthesizing as efficiently, thus aren't providing corals with adequate resources for growth? Especially if the light size of the coral (Acropora for example) is already in a par of 250-300, the shaded size would be much less. Just a speculation.

 

[chcgregg]

The Orphek Atlantik V4 Gen 2 are the one lights I really want to try. If I get results from this test with using the Radions, I'll be selling those off and purchasing a couple Atlantiks.

 

[GabeM]

Great read so far - thank you to everyone posting in this thread and OP.

Replacing the spectrum found in daylight with LED is one of the big challenges of the horticulture industry and I have spent a good amount of time *ahem* studying. It is interesting that HPS bulbs with their very intense red spectrum and high light output seem to photosynthesize the best after the sexual maturation of plants.

Does zooxanthellae have a similar life cycle or is it too simple of an organism?

 

[chcgregg]

Great read so far - thank you to everyone posting in this thread and OP.

Replacing the spectrum found in daylight with LED is one of the big challenges of the horticulture industry and I have spent a good amount of time *ahem* studying. It is interesting that HPS bulbs with their very intense red spectrum and high light output seem to photosynthesize the best after the sexual maturation of plants.

Does zooxanthellae have a similar life cycle or is it too simple of an organism?

I'm happy that we are having a good engaging discussion. maintaining an open mind always makes for interesting discussions

I work in the horticulture industry, specifically with indoor plants. In our shop, we use daylight T8 bulbs as shop lights, as they have a better spectral output than the retrofit LED tubes do. Can keep more light demanding plants such as ficus in full artificial light with no problems what so ever. I am going to try the LED tubes over my personal collection to see if I get better results, but I digress.

Zooxanthellae is a single celled dinoflagellate, so it isn't as comparable to the life cycle of a vascular plant, but the way it photosynthesizes is consistent as far as I am aware (feel free to correct me).

 

[GabeM]

I'm happy that we are having a good engaging discussion. maintaining an open mind always makes for interesting discussions

I work in the horticulture industry, specifically with indoor plants. In our shop, we use daylight T8 bulbs as shop lights, as they have a better spectral output than the retrofit LED tubes do. Can keep more light demanding plants such as ficus in full artificial light with no problems what so ever. I am going to try the LED tubes over my personal collection to see if I get better results, but I digress.

Zooxanthellae is a single celled dinoflagellate, so it isn't as comparable to the life cycle of a vascular plant, but the way it photosynthesizes is consistent as far as I am aware (feel free to correct me).

I am an electronics geek and am very new to the sciences of biology so I won't be correcting anyone! I found this link and I have to agree with you: https://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/inde...eir_Symbiotic_Relationship_with_Marine_Corals

I also tend to err on the opinion that IR energy is important to plant growth and was one of these reasons I purchased the orphek atlantik light. I will continue to follow this excellent experiment.

 

[hart24601]

That's interesting! Did you have many hydras running over your tank? I can't seem to access your growth winning link in your bio, would love to read it! Feel free to send a message.

One thing I am noticing with what your are saying is that those lights you are using have very good spread on them, as would a very good halide reflector, and T5 naturally. And another thing is that these point source LED's are extremely directional, such as Kessil and a few others. Maybe in the shaded areas the zoox are present in a higher density and aren't photosynthesizing as efficiently, thus aren't providing corals with adequate resources for growth? Especially if the light size of the coral (Acropora for example) is already in a par of 250-300, the shaded size would be much less. Just a speculation.

Sadly I think the individual threads have been deleted. However the tank is in the other signature link when it was tank spotlight. Was running 4 26s over a 120 (and eventually 5) so it did have a lot of lights however the coral was pretty high up so I don't know how much overlap there was.

 

[chcgregg]

Sadly I think the individual threads have been deleted. However the tank is in the other signature link when it was tank spotlight. Was running 4 26s over a 120 (and eventually 5) so it did have a lot of lights however the coral was pretty high up so I don't know how much overlap there was.

Very nice! Tank looks great. Did you manage to record growth rates on various acropora?

 

[hart24601]

Very nice! Tank looks great. Did you manage to record growth rates on various acropora?

I never bothered logging others aside from the contest. In my experience once a system, of any lighting type, starts to click - like when coralline is a weed, then acros grow fast enough it's really amazing.

 

[hart24601]

Here is a par map I made when running the system. Contest winner was in ~500 par.

 

[chcgregg]

Nice map, @hart24601! Do you have the original photos of the contest winner? I would love to see the growth over time.

 

[hart24601]

I don't have all the pics anymore. Here is one of the final photos. I think the contest was 4 months. There is anoher picture 2 months after the contest too. The coral grew from 2" to well over 3" however the 50%+ growth was nothing compared to the width and mass increase.

 

[chcgregg]

I don't have all the pics anymore. Here is one of the final photos. I think the contest was 4 months. There is anoher picture 2 months after the contest too. The coral grew from 2" to well over 3" however the 50%+ growth was nothing compared to the width and mass increase.

Great results! Yes, even though there may be no obvious growth tips, the colony will fill out and increase its mass overall.

 

[chcgregg]

A couple days into the experiment, and so far there have been no immediate negative responses from the corals, and in particular not issues with the acropora which is directly under the heat lamp. As this colony will be receiving a lot more infrared than the rest, it will be my main focus to see how it will respond over the next few months.

The infrared light will make its way to the ends of the tank, due to the angle of the internal parabolic reflector, but there may need to be more supplementation eventually.

 

[hart24601]

Here is another before/after from my current system running orphek only. Approx 2 months for acro and gigas.

 

[chcgregg]

That's the results we are after. Growth wise, that is on par with what I would expect from MH/T5 personally.

How are you reporting colouration of the acropora? And are you running the Orphek at a more blue spectrum?

 

[hart24601]

That's the results we are after. Growth wise, that is on par with what I would expect from MH/T5 personally.

How are you reporting colouration of the acropora? And are you running the Orphek at a more blue spectrum?

I run the orphek pretty white for a couple hours at peak (noon) then more blue at the end. IMO coloration varies more with the light intensity and water chemistry. Just personally lighting type just doesn't seem too important, I have not seen many corals grow *that much* faster or have *that much more color* than anything in my LED systems. The 120 in my signature link had great colors too and was LED only. So many other items in reef tanks seem to be more important that lighting type to me.

 

[hart24601]

Great results! Yes, even though there may be no obvious growth tips, the colony will fill out and increase its mass overall.

Keep in mind that top photo.... the image at the right was the before shot, the image on the left the after the contest. The bottom image was just after the contest was over. Lot's more tips on the top photo!

 

[chcgregg]

You raise good points @hart24601.

 

[chcgregg]

A few days in and the corals seem to be fine with the added infrared source. Spend an hour this morning dipping the largest blue stag and a few others because I saw unmistakable bitemarks over the base. Literally about 1000 small flatworms were blasted off with the coral in a bucket of tank water and ME Coral Dip. Hopefully this puts a big dent in the populations ability to recover. All the eggs were smothered with coral glue, so they shouldn't last long.

Corals are continuing to grow, no sign of an increase of nuisance algae, if anything coralline algae is looking more healthy.