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Cultivated Reef

Coral Coloration Help


VW_TDI_02

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I'm having a bit of trouble getting my coral to color up under my current lights on my frag rack. I have a LEDTric PAR 38 bulb and then a cheap eBay light with 4 blue and 8 white LEDs. The LEDtric has the following: (6) 455nm RB, (2) 6500K CW, (2) 420nm TV, (1) 660nm DR, (1) 495nm T. They are both pretty high up (16" or so above the water level. Eggcrate holding the frags is 7" below the water level) so they mix well together. The issue I'm having is that under those lights, the polyps get fantastic color but the rest of the skeletons tend to be rather white. I'm getting really good growth out of these corals and they all look very healthy with the exception of the color itself. If I turn on a regular CFL (warm white) while the LED bulbs are off, the corals get a lot more color. For example, the birds nest becomes very bright pink (almost a hot pink) color and looks fantastic but under the regular lights it looks blue. The monti caps are the same way in that I get much better color with just the CFL bulb. They aren't bleached or else they would look white regardless of what lights are on. I'm not sure if this is normal when having more blue lights. I'm relatively new to SPS and figured they would fluoresce a bit more but I may just be wrong.

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Nano sapiens

The coral animal produces fluorescent and non-fluorescent pigmentation. Added to the coral's own pigmentation, the underlying brown zooxanthellae also influence what hues we observe.

 

From your description, sounds like the warm white CFL is showing off the coral's non-fluorescent pigmentation (it can be difficult to tell the difference, but the blue/violet on by themselves will show you most of the fluoresent pigments). Today's best LED arrays use neutral white and may include some warm white to properly render non fluorescent pigmentation.

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So... who wants to operate on my PAR38 bulbs??? hahaha. Thanks for the information. I'm glad it's just the spectrum of the bulbs and not some sort of health problem or anything like that.

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Best bet might be to work on those cheap Ebay cool whites (they're probably 8000K or more) ;)

That's what I was thinking. They're actually 10K :/

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