Red sea reef LED spectrum

merereef

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A lot of reefled users say they are geting faster growth and colour from them when they switched from hydras/radions, i have asked many LFS about the lights snd they have all said the same thing too. I went in to the store with teo tanks side my side one running hydras and one running the reefled.. the corals under the reefled just looked more fluffy and polyps were extended and they had the same chalice in both tanks and the one under the red sea had rainbow colour on the edges. looking at spectrum for the reef LED looks like the UV AND VOILET channels are low, seems they purposely made the lights this way... does anyone know why red sea made their lights this way? Maybe this is the secret @redsea
 

Dana Riddle

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A lot of reefled users say they are geting faster growth and colour from them when they switched from hydras/radions, i have asked many LFS about the lights snd they have all said the same thing too. I went in to the store with teo tanks side my side one running hydras and one running the reefled.. the corals under the reefled just looked more fluffy and polyps were extended and they had the same chalice in both tanks and the one under the red sea had rainbow colour on the edges. looking at spectrum for the reef LED looks like the UV AND VOILET channels are low, seems they purposely made the lights this way... does anyone know why red sea made their lights this way? Maybe this is the secret @redsea
It would take a lot of testing to determine why one tank looked better than the other, but I seriously doubt it had much, if anything, to do with spectrum.
I could argue that violet light is best, based to this experiment (but growth rates in the Porites corals were statistically insignificant.) See here:
As a general statement, light intensity and water velocity has more to do with polyp expansions.
 

Juniorh2r

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A lot of reefled users say they are geting faster growth and colour from them when they switched from hydras/radions, i have asked many LFS about the lights snd they have all said the same thing too. I went in to the store with teo tanks side my side one running hydras and one running the reefled.. the corals under the reefled just looked more fluffy and polyps were extended and they had the same chalice in both tanks and the one under the red sea had rainbow colour on the edges. looking at spectrum for the reef LED looks like the UV AND VOILET channels are low, seems they purposely made the lights this way... does anyone know why red sea made their lights this way? Maybe this is the secret @redsea
For the time I've had them yes I have seen growth and what I like about it if you own a red sea tank it has presets for that tank and the type of corals in general your trying to grow I love the lights there are simple and they work I recently added a noopsyce hybrid and that should really boost things up
 

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. does anyone know why red sea made their lights this way? Maybe this is the secret @redsea
Within the REEF-SPEC guidelines they use the word Reef-Safe to describe the ability to make changes to both color and intensity by using only a few options (2 color channels) to prevent users from making wildly unnatural changes in lighting that are not optimal for coral health. ReefLED users are given three Reef Safe spectrums that are achieved with the settings below.
•15,000 Kelvin - Both blue and white channels set to 100% intensity
•20,000 Kelvin - Blue channel is set to 100% and white channel is tuned down to 50% intensity
•23,000 Kelvin - Blue channel is set to 100% and white channel is tuned down to 10% intensity

The white channel consists of 8,000K white LEDs and the blue channel is a proprietary mix of blue, violet and UV LEDs which they have dubbed REEF-SPEC Blue.

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merereef

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It would take a lot of testing to determine why one tank looked better than the other, but I seriously doubt it had much, if anything, to do with spectrum.
I could argue that violet light is best, based to this experiment (but growth rates in the Porites corals were statistically insignificant.) See here:
As a general statement, light intensity and water velocity has more to do with polyp expansions.

Yeah its still crazy though that they use low uv and voilet channels and yet nearly every reefled user from consumers to stores all claim they get faster growth.. i mean there was a coral grow out competition on here and the winner uses the david saxby schedule which also uses low uv and voilet.. mike paletta says the growth and colour in david saxbys tanks is phenomenal
 
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merereef

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oreo54

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See low uv and voilets and yet fast growth and great colour
You need to be careful that a par increase isn't a factor.
 

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Yeah its still crazy though that they use low uv and voilet channels and yet nearly every reefled user from consumers to stores all claim they get faster growth.. i mean there was a coral grow out competition on here and the winner uses the david saxby schedule which also uses low uv and voilet.. mike paletta says the growth and colour in david saxbys tanks is phenomenal

I thought the same thing, to the point I even almost returned mine until I watched a video on PAR values. Though I gotta say I thought it was just me thinking my monti and acro were growing like weeds, good to hear im not crazy lol.
 
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merereef

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I thought the same thing, to the point I even almost returned mine until I watched a video on PAR values. Though I gotta say I thought it was just me thinking my monti and acro were growing like weeds, good to hear im not crazy lol.

I checked today if i max out the uv voilets royal blue and blue only the ai hydra HD the watts come to around 70 watts where as the red sea with low uv and voilet they dedicate their blue 80watts.. seems they dedicate their lights to give off more blue that anything else
 
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merereef

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@Dana Riddle so a little bit of a strange question but here goes. At what depth do we find the most colourful corals? If in shallow water then im guessing corals are getting full spectrum and if the answer is deep waters then that would mean they are getting the blue spectrum of light only.

the second question is when we go diving the water appears to be like a teal colour rather than say ROYAL blue like in our tanks. Is this correct or am i looking at it wrong. I tried to up my greens with the royal blueto try create the ocean look of colour just to see how it looks but probably does nothing for corals
 

Dana Riddle

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Good question, but no easy answer. The non-fluorescent chromoproteins are produced by the coral are in response to high light intensity, as are many of the green fluorescent proteins (these seem to natural sunscreens). If I recall correctly, teal or aqua colors are at greater depths as are some of the red fluorescent proteins (these can act as supplemental light to photosynthesis). With several hundred colorful proteins identified, we can begin to group them into general categories (but with cautions).
 

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Screenshot_20200917-103257.png
Thought this was interesting. Keep in mind 500nm is considered teal or cyan
 

Dana Riddle

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Screenshot_20200917-103257.png
Thought this was interesting. Keep in mind 500nm is considered teal or cyan
Using radiometric units gives me a little heartburn. The energy required to make the magnesium atom jump from the ground state to an excited one requires only so much energy, hence photosynthesis is promoted by low energy red wavelengths as well as higher energy wavelengths. Excess energy is essentially wasted.
 

oreo54

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Thought this was interesting. Keep in mind 500nm is considered teal or cyan
It's only natural... :) Anyways nature is rarely optimized...contrary to what some believe..

Natural is an acquired taste.
 
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oreo54

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Using radiometric units gives me a little heartburn. The energy required to make the magnesium atom jump from the ground state to an excited one requires only so much energy, hence photosynthesis is promoted by low energy red wavelengths as well as higher energy wavelengths. Excess energy is essentially wasted.
 

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Dana Riddle

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Those researchers chose to use radiometric extinction coefficients for wavelengths of 400 to 700nm for various reasons. This doesn't change the fact that PAR (or correctly PPFD) is the preferred way to look at wavelengths and photosynthesis.
 

oreo54

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Those researchers chose to use radiometric extinction coefficients for wavelengths of 400 to 700nm for various reasons. This doesn't change the fact that PAR (or correctly PPFD) is the preferred way to look at wavelengths and photosynthesis.
Just posted it for reference..and yes photon counts ..count.. ;)
Point was a general idea of which color is where.
Adj. from watts to photons wouldn't bring red back at x meters..:)
Gee you sound like me and "PAR"...

I'd love to see a PPFD/nm/m chart..inc. the expanded PAR spectrum..
 
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