Lighting

[AshtonMitchell]

Does anyone know how many lumens corals actually need? As well as spectrums?

Also I read something about blacklights as night lights instead of leds has anyone had any experience with this? Does it affect coral growth or fish growth? Bacteria? etc.?

[archer772]

I dont remember where I read it and cant remember why but they say you shouldnt use Black Lights. I dont know about Lumens but everybody I know goes by the PAR value and then how deep the type of light will penetrate for the type of corals you want to keep. What size of tank do you have and what type of corals do think you will be keeping??

[Amphiprion]

Lumens are a good value for total light output, whereas PAR is useful for us since we deal with photosynthetic organisms. Black lights fall outside the useful range altogether--remember fluorescing pigments are absorbing and emitting the light back away from the coral = no net light. I don't think the increase in UV is the best idea. There are no set values, but there is some info on a Leptoseris spp. that is one of the deepest occurring photosynthetic corals. Other than that, there is little data available (except for what the corals are actually receiving). I also think they show light saturation values somewhere, but that is dependent upon both intensity and duration.