The kind of bad waves that I am talking about is peaks in the certain spectrum ranges that are 5x or 10x higher than sunlight or other light sources. This was kinda proven with older white LEDs that some of the early RB and Radion lights used - the ones where the owners would never let them get over like 20%. All spectrum charts are blended and you almost never see a raw spectrum chart for any diode used in the hobby (people link general lighting diodes, but who cares, right?), but the few that you do see have some spikes and even larger areas that are many times what they should be... but it all counts as PAR even though it is not that useful. I think that what gets blamed on lenses and programming is a problem with the diodes themselves which has a large swath between brands and kinds which leads to even more confusion and assumptions.
I think that you have to keep the PAR lower so that the corals can heal and rebuild, which they don't have to do under other sources. I do not think that this is a programming issue. It also does not appear that the blue range is as harmful as the lower energy ranges over 500nm, but those ranges are still necessary.
Another theory that is pretty proven is the Emerson Effect where red and far-red light allows energy transfer from the photosystems in the proteins to allow more energy to be processed. Most LEDs have weak red and no far-red at all (other than the Atlantik v4 which added diodes just for this purpose). MH have a good amount of IR and some T5s do as well.
There is definitely enough evidence to make you want to keep your LEDs below 350.
Some of the best LED tanks have their lights up very high. This makes sense since the more spread out the waves, the less damage that they can do (if indeed they do damage). In any case, it is hard to ignore the success of some of these tanks.
I think that you have to keep the PAR lower so that the corals can heal and rebuild, which they don't have to do under other sources. I do not think that this is a programming issue. It also does not appear that the blue range is as harmful as the lower energy ranges over 500nm, but those ranges are still necessary.
Another theory that is pretty proven is the Emerson Effect where red and far-red light allows energy transfer from the photosystems in the proteins to allow more energy to be processed. Most LEDs have weak red and no far-red at all (other than the Atlantik v4 which added diodes just for this purpose). MH have a good amount of IR and some T5s do as well.
There is definitely enough evidence to make you want to keep your LEDs below 350.
Some of the best LED tanks have their lights up very high. This makes sense since the more spread out the waves, the less damage that they can do (if indeed they do damage). In any case, it is hard to ignore the success of some of these tanks.
