Suspending lights

bleaching will only happen with poor water quality as well

 

A poor quality light would mean not enough light. In this case the coral does not bleach, but becomes pale in color. Total color is not absent.

When bleaching, photosynthesis stops. Edit: Photosynthesis slows down. It does not stop until the coral is dying.

Not enough light, & too much light, are two different things.

 

i said poor water quality not light quality. and the point really is that his light wont be too much for the coral.

if you take a mushroom under flourescants and transfer him directly to 400 watt halides. it will die most likely. but if acclimated it wont.

if what you said was true anyone with halides would be totally out of luck with any soft coral. and its not true. many people keep softies under halides.

 

...not what I am saying. Your manipulating what I am saying. Crals do bleach, and corals do melt. Yes, you can have softies under metal halides. I know some people that do. But there is a limit. If you put a soft coral under a 400w MH(even if acclimating) it may melt, due to it being too intense of a light.

There are limits...higher output lighting is needed for some corals than others, also depending upon depth.

 

The big issue that I am aware of with excess light is the release of oxygen by zooxanthellae. Corals can handle oxygen being released into the coral tissue faster than it can diffuse out. In this case, excess oxygen and radical byproducts are stored in the tissue and expelled latter, and the radicals are broken down by protective enzymes. If there is too much light though, more is produced than can be stored and broken down. Also, the light can actually interfere with the enzymes used to break down o2 byproducts. Some corals can't control zooxanthellae as well as others and are more prone to this situation. In this case, hyperoxic environment can become toxic to the coral forcing expulsion of zooxanthellae. This is pretty well documented if you do a google scholar search.

 

Sorry, your thread got a bit off topic. So, back to the question. I assume these are power compact bulbs? If so, PC's do not produce much light at all. Watts is a measure of power consumption, not output. PAR, although not perfect is a much better metric. The PC's probably only have about 1/2 the par of say a T-5. So, half of 260, would be like 130W of T-5. There is another problem though, PC's are big and it's tough to build reflectors around them to focus light down into the aquarium well. So, they have trouble punching down into the tank. Finally, the actinics are generally only 1/2 the PAR of a daylight bulb, so, even less.... So, basically, IMO, you won't have to worry about too much light.

 

Yes, this thread did get off topic a bit. Sorry about that. I actually wrote a 6 page paper about this for school..