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Showing content with the highest reputation on 03/22/2022 in all areas

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  2. Light and Corals Light is a critical factor for coral health. Many corals contain zooxanthellae, which produce food through photosynthesis. Many corals produces chromaproteins and fluorescent proteins to cope with their environment. In addition, corals, even non-photosynthetic ones, relies on the light to synchronize their daily activities. Photons Let's first consider what sun light really is. Without going in to much of the technicalities, let us consider the sunlight as streams of photons. These photons travels from the sun, pass through our atmosphere, enters the water, and lands on the corals. The number of photons lands on 1 cm^2 of area in one second is called photosyntheic photon flux density (PPFD). In reefing hobby, we call this PAR. While this is not correct, but it's kind of deeply rooted in our hobby. These photons however, are not all the same. Photons can carry different amount of energy. This difference in energy is inversely proportional to the wavelength of the photons. The shorter the wavelength, the more energy the photons have. We, or corals, can't split photons. If a photon has too much or too little energy, they are not useful for the corals. Now if we were to consider only PAR, then we are looking at a rather incomplete picture. While we know how many photons we have, we don't know what types of photons we have. This is less of a problem in the days of T5 and metal halides. The bulbs and tubes have a known spectrum, and we need only to determine the intensity. With the advent of LEDs, we can no longer take the spectrum for granted. The type and the number of diodes, the setting of the light profile, these will have a big impact on coral growth and coloration. In the next few posts, I will try and discuss the impacts of several interesting spectrums, and we can take a good hard look (metaphorically of course) at our lights.
    1 point
  3. A quick update of how the aquarium looks..... after the sand is thoroughly cleaned.
    1 point
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