Black light?

[Tangman1218]

Anyone use, or have used, a blacklight for anything on an aquarium?

 

Tang

[wav3form]

Anyone use, or have used, a blacklight for anything on an aquarium?

 

Tang

 

Blacklights aren't really useful for a reef aquarium.

[reefone]

black lihgt will make ur corals glow but r harmful to them

[mahi mahi boy]

The Propagator says his tank looks crazy under the blacklight.....he just said don't leave it long term.

 

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?...c=100302&hl

[Mr. Fosi]

Lots of UV.

 

UV = bad for most living things.

[Tangman1218]

Thanks everyone

 

Tang

[Undertheradar]

There are several other bulbs besides black lights that are made for production of UV (Sylvania makes a few). Some of these produce specific bands of UV-A, which actually gets converted to some of the more purple colors in corals, and has been shown to be quite beneficial. At that, black lights have a sucky output in this region. The G-man true actinic03 T5 bulbs have a good amount of UV-A though... you might want to look into it. UV-B doesnt do much, and gets filtered out by water pretty fast, and UV-C is just harmful to everything (B can be in huge amounts, and A can be in huge amounts) so its not even worth talking about. But there are many corals that have been shown to benefit from some levels of UV-A.

[Daemonfly]

And there's also the argument that black light bulbs have such a low output to begin with, it could not matter in the long run.

 

While I've seen good arguments on UV from sun & MH, I've never seen good arguments or data on low-output fluorescent bulbs.

[Undertheradar]

well, low output is never better than high output... thats for sure. But there is significant research out there to support the idea of letting some UV-A shine over the corals.