10k growth, 14k colour, is it cheating?

[kwirky]

I've been running a 10k 250W bulb on my tank strictly for growth and I added some frags recently as "live test kits" for my tank. One of the frags appeared to be bleaching on it's polyp tips yet it was still growing and had polyp extension.

I popped on my previous 14k 150W light for curiosity's sake and lo and behold those "bleached" tips were phosphorescing BLUE! So I was right and I am getting colour of the the browned out frags like I expected I would and I don't have to be running high-K bulbs to do that.

so I'm keeping my 14k light around to check on the colour progression of my corals here and there but I'm running the 10k full time for growth. best of both worlds :). (I also have about 77x turnover in my tank with the return and the vortech so I think that could be a factor in the growth as well).

under the 10k it's completely brown. that little bud at the bottom right grew to that in about 1 week. there's another bud on the other side. these frags had zero growth in the store so i'm pretty excited.
http://www.kwirky88.com/images/aquarium/coral-001.jpg

[Delphinus]

77x turnover. :eek:

Wow man, that is pretty awesome growth for ONE FREAKIN' WEEK!

If that isn't an argument for deriving appropriate amounts and forms of flow, I don't know what would be.

So are you running both lamps over your tank simultaneously?

[kwirky]

77x turnover. :eek:

Wow man, that is pretty awesome growth for ONE FREAKIN' WEEK!

If that isn't an argument for deriving appropriate amounts and forms of flow, I don't know what would be.

So are you running both lamps over your tank simultaneously?

no not simultaneously. I run the 250W DE 10k XM bulb in a lumen max 3 reflector with a 250W electronic galaxy ballast full time.

my previous light has been just kicking around and that's an aqualight pro 150W with a 14k 150W DE aquaconnect bulb. the picture above was after I took off the 10k light and put on the 14k. took the picture, then swapped it back to the 10k.

and my superman monti is finally starting to look like superman monti. I don't have any pictures of it previously but it used to be smooth textured grey with the red-ish polyps. It's getting all bumpy and starting to show a slight bit of blue even under the 10k light. this picture's after I put the 10k back.
http://www.kwirky88.com/images/aquarium/coral-003.jpg

[fencer]

You could add actinics. If you are feeding your corals why don't you just keep the 14k on.

[digital-audiophile]

Tough to say if the growth can be attributed directly to the light temperature, no? Would you not have to to consider the vortech random flow and zeovit as well?

[kwirky]

You could add actinics. If you are feeding your corals why don't you just keep the 14k on.

no actinics for a while because of the budget restraints. and I'm running the XM bulb because I actually like the "shallow reef" look of it and the 150W 14k looks kinda dark. in the end I want to run a 10k bulb with fiji purple and super actinic T5's. that'll happen as the money happens.

and I don't feed my corals beyond zeovit, amino acids, and coral vitalizer. if it were to be considered scientifically there are too many variables to really figure out if any one thing is contributing more than another. I don't know if the amino acids or the CV is helping but I dose it anyways. I don't want to start turning anything down or removing anything out of fear of stopping the momentum ;)

i got the little frags to see when the tank's ready for larger more expensive coral. 3 frags included 2 acropora types and one red monti (not the superman). the red monti bleached and the 2 acropora are doing well. so I'm not getting more for a while unless I see the monti reverse in health.

[Delphinus]

It's not just Kelvin temperature though is it? Well, partially I suppose. But going from 14k 150W to 10K 250W is surely going to have a pretty significant increase in PAR, you'd think?

[kwirky]

I basically put the findings from two different research papers on advanced aquarist together. The one paper had results that showed colour temperature played little role in SPS growth and instead PAR made a difference. The other paper showed that coral grown under 10k lights don't "lack" any colour and colour shows instantly when put under 20k bulbs. They did speculate that there's a possibility for certain colour proteins to only show up under certain colour temperatures or other variables but they said research has to be done to prove that.

There's a LOT of exciting research happening lately in coral colour :D
here are the two articles:
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2008/3/aafeature1
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2002/2/aafeature/view?searchterm=PAR

It's not just Kelvin temperature though is it? Well, partially I suppose. But going from 14k 150W to 10K 250W is surely going to have a pretty significant increase in PAR, you'd think?

the difference in ppfd according to sanjay's site is as follows (i substituted the icecap ballast for my galaxy and the M81 for the coralife HQI). almost 3x the PAR and I think that's why the monti frag bleached after coming from a medium light T5 system.
http://www.kwirky88.com/images/aquarium/par-difference.jpg

[Aquattro]

Well, years back many people would add the 250w Iwasaki bulbs, which were something like 7800K, but PAR through the roof and people saw amazing growth. 10k would certainly give faster growth than 14k, simply due to PAR levels. Lots of other factors too, but I've used both 10 and 14k, and 10k always produced more growth in the same tank.