prolong effect of actinic lights

[Abhishek]

Hi Dana ,

I would love to understand is prolong effect of blue actinic lights like reefbrite leds on acroporas. Does prolong effect of fluorescence inhibit photosynthesis ? Can they cause acros to look more green for lack of better word ?
I have been experiencing some of the green effect in many of my acros when I increased the actinic led photoperiod to over 11 hours with only 5-6 hours of halide lighting.
Is there any possible correlation with the true bright blue actinic leds and green color on acroporas?

Regards,
Abhishek

 

[mcarroll]

Was there also a change in the halide lighting?

How much power is there in your actinic LED's and how much in the halides?

I'm not familiar with any green effect.....will have to see if anyone else can chime in on that.

 

[BoomCorals]

In my experience greening of acros means one of 3 things.

1. Too much light, I've seen this with deep water acros.
2. Low light, depends on the acro. (More common, red planet for example)
3. Maricultured that turns green no matter what you do because maricultured almost always change colors the first 6 weeks out of the ocean.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

^^^^^^^that.
We are also discussing it here
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/p...yellow-to-greenish.311687/page-2#post-3858945

 

[Abhishek]

No change in halides . Running sane radiums .
The leds are reefbrite tech leds that I ran for 11 hrs .
Too much light might be an issue as I was getting around 350-400 par on the bottom . But most of my corals are on the bottom .

Increased height so as to match 250-350 PAR across all corals
But it's just an observation that with increased blue led running for long mh hours , I was getting less growth and more green . Alk consumption was a little low too as I measure every 10 hours everyday

Regards,
Abhishek

 

[mcarroll]

I think for many if not most corals you'll find in the hobby, that's too much light. More simply makes them stop photosynthesizing earlier in the day – they rarely need more light.

Nutrients and flow (and water chemistry) would both become bigger factors at higher and longer irradiance levels....if there were any issues, they would be magnified.

Apparently it is known that some corals "green" under too much light....not sure if other factors may be at work (like the above), but it does happen.

Can you remind me what your nutrient levels have been like for the last month or so?

Also, just for reference, how big is your tank and what do you have for flow?

Do you do water changes?

 

[Abhishek]

@mcarroll - Thanks for the reply .
Tank is 30 in x 30 in x 18 in with 2 tunze 6095s and 2 gyre 130 + seaswirl connected to return and a small jebao rw4 on the bottom at the back for taking detritus off the bottom.
Feed the tank heavily as I have found high nutrients help me keep dinos at bay ( Thanks to you on the thread on dinos)
So nutrients are Nitrates - 10 and phosphates around 0.1

Water changes done 10% a week . Lit by 2 x 250 watts radium halides on M80 ballast and 2 reefbrite tech leds .

Only acropora and montipora frags , along with a couple of euphyllias to keep wife happy :D
Alk runs very stable at 7.6-7.7 and performed recent triton tests . It showed i have high aluminium which might be due to marinepure blocks which i don't use anymore and high barium from Aquaforest salt I was using in the past. Now moved to Tropic Marin.
A little low on Idoine , Molybdenum , Manganese , Zinc and Nickel but thats understandable as I don't dose anything I can't test for.

Here's the triton report attached.
I had low phosphate at that time which caused dino .triton test confirmed po4 to be 0.02 .So started feeding 4 times a day . Gfo is used sometimes when it goes above 0.1 and no carbon .

Regards,
Abhishek

 

[mcarroll]

Thanks for the refresh!!! :)

Tank is 30 in x 30 in x 18 in [...]
Lit by 2 x 250 watts radium halides on M80 ballast and 2 reefbrite tech leds .

Wow, that's gotta be a ton of light! :)

Can you tell me what PAR or lux you get at the water surface?

Only for perspective: my 50 Gallon is 36x18x18"H and all I had was a pair of 150w Radiums (Coralife fixture) and that was a ton of light. (LED's were only used as moonlights in those days, so no supplementation either!)

I hate to say it, but I don't think the LED's are having much impact on the situation when the Radiums are on.....so that leaves me more certain that the issue is the extra hours.

The Radiums probably have your corals photo-saturated by the second or third hour of lights-on.

Having a "protracted day" beyond that amount of hours arguably only benefits organisms that aren't so limited....not generally critters we want to favor, depending on your tank and tastes.

I'd shorten the whole day, LED's included, down to the hours of your halides. Make sure the tank's "day" happens when you're around to view it too, BTW!! When I ran halides, for a long time my day cycle started at 3pm and ran 6 hours. :)

 

[Abhishek]

Thanks for the refresh!!! :)



Wow, that's gotta be a ton of light! :)

Can you tell me what PAR or lux you get at the water surface?

Only for perspective: my 50 Gallon is 36x18x18"H and all I had was a pair of 150w Radiums (Coralife fixture) and that was a ton of light. (LED's were only used as moonlights in those days, so no supplementation either!)

I hate to say it, but I don't think the LED's are having much impact on the situation when the Radiums are on.....so that leaves me more certain that the issue is the extra hours.

The Radiums probably have your corals photo-saturated by the second or third hour of lights-on.

Having a "protracted day" beyond that amount of hours arguably only benefits organisms that aren't so limited....not generally critters we want to favor, depending on your tank and tastes.

I'd shorten the whole day, LED's included, down to the hours of your halides. Make sure the tank's "day" happens when you're around to view it too, BTW!! When I ran halides, for a long time my day cycle started at 3pm and ran 6 hours. :)

I measure PAR with Apogee MQ 510 par meter and it measured around 400-450 on the top of my rocks where I have my Purple Monster and Oregon Torts .
Majority of the acros are on the bottom receiving around 300-350 PAR , some in 400s .
I too run my halides for exactly 6 hours now .

Regards,
Abhishek

 

[Dana Riddle]

Hi Dana ,

I would love to understand is prolong effect of blue actinic lights like reefbrite leds on acroporas. Does prolong effect of fluorescence inhibit photosynthesis ? Can they cause acros to look more green for lack of better word ?
I have been experiencing some of the green effect in many of my acros when I increased the actinic led photoperiod to over 11 hours with only 5-6 hours of halide lighting.
Is there any possible correlation with the true bright blue actinic leds and green color on acroporas?

Regards,
Abhishek

Yes, absorption of UV/blue light and fluorescent emission in the green portion of the spectrum will negatively impact photosynthesis, although it might be small. As you know, the output of LEDs is almost monochromatic and output around 450nm is very close to that used in photosynthesis.

 

[Dana Riddle]

At the commercial coral farm back in the 90's, we thought more light was better and even tested a Fusion sulfur lamp that created so much light (>20,000 PAR) that it maxed out my Li-Cor quantum meter. We didn't use it ;). Instead, we used vertically-mounted Iwasaki 400 watt 6500K lamps in high-bay fixtures that could deliver up to around 900 PAR. In fact, we grew the 'Purple Monster' Acropora in this amount of light, although growth was slow (but coloration was superb.) Most Acros were grown in less light. We now know PAR of 300 to 400 will max out photosynthesis in many Acropora specimens.

 

[BoomCorals]

At the commercial coral farm back in the 90's, we thought more light was better and even tested a Fusion sulfur lamp that created so much light (>20,000 PAR) that it maxed out my Li-Cor quantum meter. We didn't use it ;). Instead, we used vertically-mounted Iwasaki 400 watt 6500K lamps in high-bay fixtures that could deliver up to around 900 PAR. In fact, we grew the 'Purple Monster' Acropora in this amount of light, although growth was slow (but coloration was superb.) Most Acros were grown in less light. We now know PAR of 300 to 400 will max out photosynthesis in many Acropora specimens.

So when a coral maxes out what happens to the coral? Is this a daily maximum where downtime with less or no light is needed? How do these affect coloration? I've always wondered!

 

[Dana Riddle]

So when a coral maxes out what happens to the coral? Is this a daily maximum where downtime with less or no light is needed? How do these affect coloration? I've always wondered!

Think of light as gasoline, photosynthesis as engine RPMs, and maximum photosynthesis as the engine's red line. Running the engine at red line is OK (if you really want to), but exceeding it could damage the motor. Now, think of the minimum amount of light required (the compensation point) as giving the motor just enough gas to go past idle and start the car in motion. I guess I could reach deeply and make an analogy about coloration and a motor, but I won't. Many of the blue, pink, and purple non-fluorescent chromoproteins we see in the tips and bases of growing Acropora are known to be a response to light (particularly blue light) and serve as a sunscreen to high light conditions.

 

[Abhishek]

At the commercial coral farm back in the 90's, we thought more light was better and even tested a Fusion sulfur lamp that created so much light (>20,000 PAR) that it maxed out my Li-Cor quantum meter. We didn't use it ;). Instead, we used vertically-mounted Iwasaki 400 watt 6500K lamps in high-bay fixtures that could deliver up to around 900 PAR. In fact, we grew the 'Purple Monster' Acropora in this amount of light, although growth was slow (but coloration was superb.) Most Acros were grown in less light. We now know PAR of 300 to 400 will max out photosynthesis in many Acropora specimens.

Excellant !! Now that you have brought up the topic of Purple Monster . All this discussion began for me when I started seeing green sheen on my Purple Monster frag . Its been only 1 month or so since I got it . Took me forever to find a nice sized OG one .
Now growth was slow for the Purple Monster because of the high PAR of 900 or because of the nature of the acropora itself to grow slowly.

Somehow, it makes me wonder that the PAR values of 300-400 might hold true for most species we have in trade except for a few exceptions - Purple Monster being one of them. Almost it feels like , it needs way more PAR than most others can absorb.

The other interesting thing you touched upon is coloration of non fluroscent pigment like purple which you think was amazing in a much lower kelvin and hence continuous exposure to monochromatic blue spectrum led might make it look different - brownish with greenish tint.

Regards,
Abhishek

 

[Dana Riddle]

Excellant !! Now that you have brought up the topic of Purple Monster . All this discussion began for me when I started seeing green sheen on my Purple Monster frag . Its been only 1 month or so since I got it . Took me forever to find a nice sized OG one .
Now growth was slow for the Purple Monster because of the high PAR of 900 or because of the nature of the acropora itself to grow slowly.

Somehow, it makes me wonder that the PAR values of 300-400 might hold true for most species we have in trade except for a few exceptions - Purple Monster being one of them. Almost it feels like , it needs way more PAR than most others can absorb.
, iden
The other interesting thing you touched upon is coloration of non fluroscent pigment like purple which you think was amazing in a much lower kelvin and hence continuous exposure to monochromatic blue spectrum led might make it look different - brownish with greenish tint.

Regards,
Abhishek

See here for a short review of chromoproteins (with some information on the Purple Monster, identified as Acropora austera.) http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2007/10/aafeature2

 

[BoomCorals]

See here for a short review of chromoproteins (with some information on the Purple Monster, identified as Acropora austera.) http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2007/10/aafeature2

Fantastic article, just read the entire thing.

 

[Donovan Joannes]

IME, color morphing is more likely happens due to lighting (intensity, spectrum and exposure amount). I have blue acro turns more green at lower PAR, pink deep sea acro turns yellow due to higher PAR, red planet with green tips due to warmer spectrum???, green acros turned turquoise blue at higher PAR etc. In my case, the most probable cause is MISPLACING :D

 

[Dana Riddle]

IME, color morphing is more likely happens due to lighting (intensity, spectrum and exposure amount). I have blue acro turns more green at lower PAR, pink deep sea acro turns yellow due to higher PAR, red planet with green tips due to warmer spectrum???, green acros turned turquoise blue at higher PAR etc. In my case, the most probable cause is MISPLACING :D

If that's misplacing, more should do it. Myself included!;Smuggrin

 

[Donovan Joannes]

If that's misplacing, more should do it. Myself included!;Smuggrin

LOL. Is it correct for me to assume that lights (the whole bunch of details about lighting) is the culprit for color mismatch?. My sps corals is a mixed of wild sticks, from tidal line (2 - 3 feet of water at lowest tide) to several meters deep (roughly 10 - 20 meters) so the light changes are quite dramatic as compared to 18" deep tank.

 

[Donovan Joannes]

Another question lingering in my head is for every meter of sea depth, how much PAR dropped?. Any scientific data on this?. In our tank, the losses is quite significant and we are talking about inches depth here.