Par from T5 vs par from led

[saltyfilmfolks]

I just talked to him before Christmas. To get a diode that will cover a wide range say from UVA to Far-Red, like a MH, the diodes degrade pretty quickly. The people using older fixtures do not have this kind of spectrum width and the diodes can last longer. Current UV diodes have short life span.

Why would nobody expect Xenia to take 500-700 par? The stuff grows in lagoons sometimes in the open air or under a few inches or feet of water. I expect it to take 1200-1500 PAR. Z&P as well.



All of the supposition, theory and other things aside, the bottom line is that the quality is not as good and the coral do not respond the same. There is a lot of reasons and theory why that all turn into red herrings, some strawmen and a lot of excuses. When the excuses stop, real progress might get made by the manufacturers.

It’s actually not exuses. It discussion. It is in fact, theses discussions that make change.
You may have noticed , they are now making t5 led hybreds.
That came from right here with hobbiests.
You may have noticed they are now making leds with diffusions. It’s impossible to rember how many diffusion threads I’ve been in over the last three years.
This is how progress is made in fact.

Novelist is making excuses. There are none. Led grow coral when it’s done correctly. We can suppose and keep referring to uv and far red as a superstitious cling to old tech when the biology still doesn’t support it.
None that I have seen, I should say.

And past red is heat. And if you look at a red led I have with a $3 spectrometer , it’s not just 660.
In fact led builder guys get all bent that the spectrum of the colors get to broad. (Lol right?) they call it “dirty”, and start saying binning and cree and have a bunch of other justifications.
IMO , the reason a mars or no name B.B. work so well is becuse the thing is a dirty spectral mess with too much blue and maybe too much green. Depending on the day it was built of course. They run out of stuff.


As much as I have a life long passion for arc lamps , after I went 14mh (600paris at the top of a 20 in) then the radium, I went to an SB black box (was sad I couldn’t do the heat here) same basic par, in two weeks my acros sprouted and went nuts. I don’t know why. But that’s why I’m here looking to find out.

 

[jda]

This is where the premise of the pseudo science in marine lighting is bad. In every other realm, what happens in nature is the standard and you have to prove why stuff is not needed. In reefing, the opposite is true where folks assume that what happens in nature with evolution and adaptability is wrong and that we have to prove why specimens that have survived to use every ounce of energy available have it wrong. You are smart enough to know that UV and IR are helpful to coral - you don't need any studies for this.

 

[madweazl]

This is where the premise of the pseudo science in marine lighting is bad. In every other realm, what happens in nature is the standard and you have to prove why stuff is not needed. In reefing, the opposite is true where folks assume that what happens in nature with evolution and adaptability is wrong and that we have to prove why specimens that have survived to use every ounce of energy available have it wrong. You are smart enough to know that UV and IR are helpful to coral - you don't need any studies for this.

Care to expand on this?

 

[oreo54]

You are smart enough to know that UV and IR are helpful to coral - you don't need any studies for this.

speaking of pseudo-science..

You know Corals have adapted to UV/ IR...but it's not because of the "good things" in it.

Recent measurements of ozone levels have led to concern that the stratospheric ozone layer is being depleted as a result of contamination with man-made chlorofluorocarbons. Concomitantly, the amounts of solar UV-B radiation reaching the Earth's surface is increasing. UV-B radiation has been shown to be harmful to living organisms, damaging DNA, proteins, lipids and membranes. Plants, which use sunlight for photosynthesis and are unable to avoid exposure to enhanced levels of UV-B radiation, are at risk. Thus, mechanisms by which plants may protect themselves from UV radiation are of particular interest.

Even the "good" effects of UV A is to repair/protect from other UV damage.

UVR has been an important evolutionary force, generating mutations, leading to new traits, and
driving the development of species diversity. Mutations are, however,mostly negative, inhibiting vital cellular processes (DNA transcription
and replication) and resulting in disturbed cellular function, sometimes even cell death. Fascinatingly, plants exploit blue and UV-A wavelengths
to drive DNA repair processes. Researchers have showed that DNA damage due to UVR is mostly repaired by subsequent exposure to light
in the blue or UV-A range of the spectrum. This is because blue light and/or UV-A exposure activate an enzyme (photolyase) that repairs
damaged DNA sequences. The beauty of this system is that when plants are exposed to UVR, there is always a lot of blue light present. The
involvement of blue or UV-A light in this process is known as photo-reactivation

.


A lot of what we do is to take the "bad" out of nature and add more "good"...
Depending on source, many coral generations never seen the sun..........


Damage

Too much infrared light, especially in the far red end of the spectrum, may actually damage plants. Heat may discolor or kill plants, especially if those plants haven't recently been watered. Too much infrared light may also cause plants to experience early growth spurts that reduce their health, or encourage them to flower too soon.

Yea I know terrestrial data...

Nature rarely supplies the ideal environment.. just ones that are handle-able..

When water is too warm, corals will expel the algae (zooxanthellae) living in their tissues causing the coral to turn completely white. ... Corals can survive a bleaching event, but they are under more stress and are subject to mortality.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

This is where the premise of the pseudo science in marine lighting is bad. In every other realm, what happens in nature is the standard and you have to prove why stuff is not needed. In reefing, the opposite is true where folks assume that what happens in nature with evolution and adaptability is wrong and that we have to prove why specimens that have survived to use every ounce of energy available have it wrong. You are smart enough to know that UV and IR are helpful to coral - you don't need any studies for this.

Point out the pseudo science please.

And yes corals like to be warm.

 

[mcarroll]

In every other realm, what happens in nature is the standard and you have to prove why stuff is not needed.

In reefing, the opposite is true where folks assume that what happens in nature with evolution and adaptability is wrong and that we have to prove why specimens that have survived to use every ounce of energy available have it wrong.

You are smart enough to know that UV and IR are helpful to coral - you don't need any studies for this.

Model Nature
You're right about modeling after nature.

And I've even seen folks here on R2R cite some banal philosophical argument against modeling after nature – so it's a point that bears repeating: Nature is correct – but we may not understand why. ;)

What is "correct" in nature isn't always obvious, and to complicate things, correct is usually even situational.

A big part of the problem for us is that Normal ≠ Correct.

That means it can take a lot of understanding and a lot of observation for us to glean "correct".

Smart Enough
All things considered, even "smart enough" has a moving definition.

For example...

I'm pretty sure we're all smart enough to know that Symbiodinium dino's are symbiotic with corals. Right?

But right in the middle of being "smart enough" about it, you can stumble upon...

Is the coral-algae symbiosis really ‘mutually beneficial’ for the partners?

Wait, what? ;Facepalm

There are too many examples like this to cite.

Corals did not adapt to use every iota of energy available.

They adapted to get what they need while protecting themselves from the rest.

And their abilities for self-protection are amazing, but not unlimited.

The in situ light microenvironment of corals is a good read.

Dana has writing on the topic that's more digestible though...read everything you can find by him on irradiance, pigments, emission spectra, etc. :)

Caveat Emptor (as usual)
In many areas of the hobby, info and data on the nature of things are just lacking, even to the scientific community.
(For an example, try to find some research on any of the blue damsels we keep in the hobby.)

In many areas, info in the hobby on the nature of things is pure bunk-o.

In many areas, the info we have is just the tip of the iceberg.

So at least IMO understanding is possible, but there are some fairly serious gotchas to look out for on your way there. ;)

 

[TexasTodd]

Can some LED's burn corals at what would be seen as low PAR? I'm NOT talking about spread or hot spots, I'm asking about a spot with the exact same PAR rating using LED vs T5 or MH.
Thanks,

Todd

 

[oreo54]

That question is more complicated that it looks.. ;)

 

[Genomecop]

So for someone like me..a noob..I was going to go all T5's, not because I'm a noob, but because I thought they would be good. Now I'm all confused!

 

[TexasTodd]

That question is more complicated that it looks.. ;)

And that makes me think it all the more justified!

 

[jda]

It is complicated.

With an identical PAR reading, the T5 and MH will have more output than a LED since the PAR meter cannot capture all of their useful output, but it will get most of the output from a current LED that has not really any IR or UV to speak of... so an identical PAR reading will not yield the same output. Knowing this, it also depends on the coral... some will burn with too much of any light and some will burn just when you turn the LEDs up. Then, it depends on the type LED and lenses. Water clarity matters to a degree. There are also many more factors.

I am only into acropora, so I do not know about the others, but I have a friend that will burn acropora with 250-275 PAR of white channel from a RB Photon V2. He can go up to about 450 with the blues if he keeps the whites low. I cannot burn the same acros with 750+ PAR of white MH. This is only just an anecdote.

If you keep the LEDs low enough, some coral appear to be able to "fight them off." Some do not suffer at all. A lot of this depends on what you keep. Most LED burning is to acropora and some harder to keep stuff. Some high-light 'nems like Gigs and Mags will walk away from some LEDs, but they love 1000 par of MH or even sunlight in a few inches of water. Acropora, gigs and mags are not your run-of-the-mill corals for the typical hobbyist, though.

If you are asking of LED can burn low-light coral, then yes. However, low-light coral is only low-light at a minimum. I grow rainbow chalice, bounce and jawbreaker mushrooms under 500+ PAR because they grow faster - these could do quite fine at 125-150 par, or so, but can also handle massive amounts of light. There are not too many corals that have an issue with too much high-quality light.... there are some.

 

[TexasTodd]

Interesting. This happens to be under a RB V1 on a used 150g system I recently purchased. I kept the lights at the same setting on purpose but have cleaned things up quite a bit. I've kept lots of high end acros in the past, but never with LED. This system came with some low end acros and some encrusting montis plus lots of LPS etc. The Acros are doing fine at around 250-275 PAR mostly with a mix of 50/50 for the two channels and a max of 30% on both, except, he had the blues at 100% for about an hour early afternoon.

The encrusting montis are getting torched at 115-125 PAR while I have caps, Valida, Green Slimer, an another unknown fine at the higher par. Rose Nem happy as can be at about 150 PAR same with some LPS like hammers etc.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Can some LED's burn corals at what would be seen as low PAR? I'm NOT talking about spread or hot spots, I'm asking about a spot with the exact same PAR rating using LED vs T5 or MH.
Thanks,

Todd

I would say no.
In general.

To be simple , the same spectrum and par level intensity, no.

A slightly complicated answer , you can have a single Nm of Light that is say , 100 par on the meter , and that single spectrum intensity over time can “burn “ or is just bad. Yes.

Red was a big fear for that for a long time as most only read the title of a certain article on it and not the content.

So 200 par with a big spike of a color can be bad. (Coral greening is being looked at right now from blue or violet overdose)

T5 and halide don’t seem to have this problem in general as it’s pretty analogue in spectral distribution.
Led you can tweak spikes badly.

Confused yet ? Lol.

Fwiw , I really never see it happen here in 100000”s of threads.
Only greening really.

 

[jda]

V1 RB and even the V2 can burn coral... mostly SPS. You can search on this issue. You are right to keep the whites below 30%, IMO. This is a quality thing, not a quantity thing.

In general, I only ever hear of it with white LED spectrum and SPS, but mostly acropora.

 

[TexasTodd]

Thanks jda. I may knock the whites back. Will replace it eventually but just spent quite a bit on the system.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

V1 RB and even the V2 can burn coral... mostly SPS. You can search on this issue. You are right to keep the whites below 30%, IMO. This is a quality thing, not a quantity thing.

In general, I only ever hear of it with white LED spectrum and SPS, but mostly acropora.

Thanks man , I’ll look at that.

I’d disagree a bit only as white is relative from manufacturer to manufacturer. I run a 1:1 WB with SB leds and get greening only on a couple deep water corals.
I got massive greening with my last lights at higher pars. I even greened a ricordia in the sand bed. Lol. No matter the ratio I used.
Others with SBs have reported greening in some , but use higher bile ratios.than I do. Leads me to suspect somthing in the blue or violet range.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

V1 RB and even the V2 can burn coral... mostly SPS. You can search on this issue. You are right to keep the whites below 30%, IMO. This is a quality thing, not a quantity thing.

In general, I only ever hear of it with white LED spectrum and SPS, but mostly acropora.

I’m not getting any hits on V1 RB and V2.
Can you point me in the right direction ?

 

[jda]

I am not saying that all whites will do it... only that when it happens, it seems to be whites that are the issue.

We could probably start another thread on greening of corals, but light is only one small factor, IMO.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

I am not saying that all whites will do it... only that when it happens, it seems to be whites that are the issue.

We could probably start another thread on greening of corals, but light is only one small factor, IMO.

That’s cool. What the V1 v2 thing?

 

[jda]

The Version 1 and Version 2 of the ReefBreeders Photon. You might have to go RC since the V1 is not very new, but everybody will caution folks to keep the whites under 30-40%.