Originally Posted by
clsanchez77
I can't argue with your results, but bottom line is you can't do that without nutrients in the system. A nutrient rich system will produce growth under even poor lighting conditions.
I run photo red LEDs with a single royal blue as the chlorophyl A spectral response is approximately 410-450 +/- and then 650+ range. The latest developments are showing better performance with hyper violet instead of royal blue due to decreased photo saturation. Chaeto and other algae have no use for lighting in the 460 to 620 range so this lighting is adding heat to the tank but doing little for the chaeto. I have argued this for many years but only the algae turf scrubber community has really accepted this. BRS is doing a new series of videos that I suspect is going to clarify this tremendously.
Absent of building your own unit, any LED bulb that has good spectrum in the 650+ range will perform well. LED bulbs that are heavy in yellow and light in red will perform poorly. That is why you will get people with mixed results on similar "color" bulbs. Actually not familiar with either bulb you all are using but they clearly hit the red peaks.
As for my tank, I have a 110 LPS reef that only has 4 fish in it and is fed 1/2 a cube daily. No light will fill a 5 gallon bucket on my tank and I only run my skimmer part time. LPS colors are great.
Ive been in this hobby for close to 20 years and it is comical to sit on most of these boards and watch the consensus get herded into one belief system and then the next. I remember the jump from plenums to deep sand beds to bare bottoms and I remember a time when people thought growing algae in your system on purpose was the most ridiculous thing. The general mass lost credibility to me a very long time ago. Personally I have been running [/COLOR]caulerpa because well, its what I always did. The success you and others have had with chaeto is encouraging me to make the switch, but I need more fish in the tank I think.
Watch for that BRS refugium series. If you have this must interest in fuge lighting, I don't think you will be disappointed.
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