Two deep water red macro

[Subsea]

Dragons Breath and Red Grapes are both collected in the Gulf of Mexico between 30'-130'. As water filters out spectrum with less energy, the red and yellows are gone at 30'. At 80', 40% of green remains with more than 70% of blue and violet remaining. It is in this spectrum of light that I will use to optimize cultivation of these two deep water red macros.

More than 20 years ago, I had a gorgeous display of Red Grapes that was center attraction in a 75G display tank. Using four 40W florescent lamps, two daylight and two actinic, red grapes grew 16" tall and occupied 1/3 of tank. While on an extended trip, two tangs devoured this display macro. Twenty years later, live rock was removed from my display tank to open up my tank to a lagoon theme. Rock that was put in a 29G biocube with substandard PC lights begin sprouting both red grapes and dragons breath. As I was expanding operations into being a mariculture facility, I moved these red macros onto my south porch with 1000W MH at 6500 kelvin. I doubled the PAR of MH lamps by replacing 6500 with 2700. I destroyed my seed stock with too much light.

I am presently engaged in testing different red and green macros toLED manufacturer specifications. While it is preliminary, I will make three generalizations. Gracilaria Hayi will grow under all spectrum LED. Caulerpa Paspoisdies was two weeks in transition before growth begin. Dragons Breath does not respond well to only white, red or green spectrums. While the LED manufacturer is interested in a universal light for refugium operation, I have chosen to conduct my own test on deep water macro cultivation in my mud macro refugium. To that end, I removed 100W PC at 6500 kelvin and replaced with a 200W ReefKeeper fixture. Fast growing Caulerpa Prolifera was removed as my macro filter and replaced with Red Grapes and Dragons Breath. Two blue spectrum at 450nm and 420nm were dialed down to 30% with a PAR of 45. Some of the Red Grapes had previously been under 12K reef spectrum at 150 PAR. These grapes were losing there flotation balls and showed some yellow/orange coloration. Two days after being under this reduced blue lighting, some of the yellow/orange sticks have changed color back to red. I will continue under this reduced PAR until grapes gets its flotation balls back. It was my intention to get some Dragons Breath into this experiment. I am fairly certain that Red Grapes will be a slow grower. I suspect that this is not true for Dragons Breath, because of some of the unsubstantiated claims of extremely fast growth rates that I continue to hear. Once I get both of these two deep water red macros into a steady state of growth, I will dial up the PAR. Initially I will dial up intensity of blue PAR and record growth rates of both macro. After which, we shall increase some of the other spectrum.

Until next time.

Laissez la bonne temps roulee,

Patrick