Advanced Aquarist LED/LEP coral growth study

Feature Article: Coral growth under Light Emitting Diode and Light Emitting Plasma: a cross-family comparison — Advanced Aquarist | Aquarist Magazine and Blog

Wow, what an article. Makes you second guess my LED choice for sure.

I guess full spectrum lighting is much more important than we think, and more effective?

Worried about my Pocillopora frags

 

Wow. All the heated discussions and battles about LED vs MH, and nobody has any comment on this research article?

Really surprised

 

Because this article confirms what we have been saying for nearly a year now... That the Cool White, blue, royal blue typical led combination isn't optimal...

This has nothing to do with leds... Just the leds that were chosen. Also, there is no MH control to base off of.

 

Interesting how msot SPS grew better under LEP ratehr than LED except for the different montipora colonies which preferred the LED.

Furthers confirms my belief that we should strive to provide multiple light sources and food sources to our specimens rather than depending on just one type. Also confirms that we know almsot nothing about the actual needs of many of the organisms we keep and nothing is better than mother nature at providing

 

If they had used a mixture of warm and cool whites, the spectral curve would have been similar to that of the LEP fixture, but with a large 450nm peak. The LED tech used was a couple years old as far as spectrum goes, a full spectrum fixture would have provided much better results. I know that cool whites are "full spectrum", however if you compare them to warm of nuetral whites, their spectral curve is insignificant. Warm whites have a large curve including the yellows/ ambers, cyans, reds, and even some IR output. I am sure as this technology is adapted by major manufacturers, it will be tested, and give LEDs a fairer shot.

 

Meh, I stopped reading it after I saw the huge lack of control.

Besides, I have a large colony of Pocillopora (plus it's bail-outs all over the tank) I grew from a frag and it has only ever seen light from LEDs in my tank. So once I saw how the "study" was implying LEDs couldn't grow Pocillopora I became pretty disinterested.

 

Agreed

 

Please allow me to write a brief response to the criticism raised here. First of all, it is disappointing that you seem disrespectful, putting the word study between quotation marks. We spend a lot of time and money on studies such as this, and we ensure that all information is freely available to hobbyists for their personal use.

If you would have read the discussion of our article, you would have seen that nowhere do we imply LED can't grow coral, or specifically P. damicornis. Corals can grow under any light source, as long as there are enough photons in the PAR range. We stated that the high blue LED's we used could have been detrimental to the Pocillopora colonies due to the lack of sufficient water flow. If we criticized anything, it was our flow pumps.

Please elaborate on your statement about the lack of controls. Do you mean replicate tanks for each treatment?

 

Very well put. This study was indeed more about two different spectra often used in aquaria/aquaculture, and less about the light source. If you create a spectrum with LED's that is similar to LEP, you should get comparable results. LED's are rapidly evolving and I do think they have a bright future.

p.s. This study was conducted in 2011, hence the combination of LED's, which was the standard at the time.

 

very interesting read, thank you for sharing