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Effect of UV-A Spectrum on Acropora Growth and Coloration
- Thread starter J1a
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J1a
Well-Known Member
It's alive!!! Or hopefully so....
There were some difficulties to carry on the experiment at the LFS. Therefore I decided to bring the experiment back to my own tank.... In the sump.
Physical Setup
The coral frags will be places on a raised egg crate in the sump, after clarisea fleece, before the protein skimmer. It's like a refugium of sorts. There is reasonable flow in the compartment, but it definately can do with more.
A Tiffen color guide is laminated and placed at the bottom of the tank. This is to act as a color standard to compare photos from different stages of experiment.
The turbulence at the surface produce sharp caustic lines. Which can interfere with the photo taking. Probably some adjustments can be done later on.
Light Setup
I have set up a lightset in the sump cabinet. Thanks to the shallow-ness of the sump, it's easy to provide high PAR with a single light.
A few details here:
The light has somewhat generic spectrum. A strong peak at 450nm, some violet peaks, and a lower end peak of 400nm.
As measured, the PAR level at the high light area is 740 PAR.
The middle area is about 550 PAR, and off to the side at the low light area is 450 PAR. This will allow some latitude in PAR matching later on.
The UV supplement will be provided by a customized light bar.
This will be positioned over the low light area eventually. The yellow channel supplements UV, the red channel supplement cyan - which will be the next project. To ensure good UV transmission, the stock splash guard is replaced with a quartz glass.
Biological Setup
Four frags are purchased from an LFS for this project.
A blue stag, a tenuis, a Millie and a microclados. I will leave the frags in the sump for a fortnight to see if the environment is condusive enough. Then the UV will be introduced.
That's about it for now.
There were some difficulties to carry on the experiment at the LFS. Therefore I decided to bring the experiment back to my own tank.... In the sump.
Physical Setup
The coral frags will be places on a raised egg crate in the sump, after clarisea fleece, before the protein skimmer. It's like a refugium of sorts. There is reasonable flow in the compartment, but it definately can do with more.
A Tiffen color guide is laminated and placed at the bottom of the tank. This is to act as a color standard to compare photos from different stages of experiment.
The turbulence at the surface produce sharp caustic lines. Which can interfere with the photo taking. Probably some adjustments can be done later on.
Light Setup
I have set up a lightset in the sump cabinet. Thanks to the shallow-ness of the sump, it's easy to provide high PAR with a single light.
A few details here:
The light has somewhat generic spectrum. A strong peak at 450nm, some violet peaks, and a lower end peak of 400nm.
As measured, the PAR level at the high light area is 740 PAR.
The middle area is about 550 PAR, and off to the side at the low light area is 450 PAR. This will allow some latitude in PAR matching later on.
The UV supplement will be provided by a customized light bar.
This will be positioned over the low light area eventually. The yellow channel supplements UV, the red channel supplement cyan - which will be the next project. To ensure good UV transmission, the stock splash guard is replaced with a quartz glass.
Biological Setup
Four frags are purchased from an LFS for this project.
A blue stag, a tenuis, a Millie and a microclados. I will leave the frags in the sump for a fortnight to see if the environment is condusive enough. Then the UV will be introduced.
That's about it for now.
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J1a
Well-Known Member
Cramped sump maybe pose a huge challenge in phototaking.
The photo above shows test setup with
Top:
Spectrum shown in the post above, daylight-ish.
Bottom:
Only blue-violet-"UV". A yellow filter is used to tame the color balance somewhat.
The tiffen card really showed after all the color balancing, the red and yellow is going to be much subdued.
The photo above shows test setup with
Top:
Spectrum shown in the post above, daylight-ish.
Bottom:
Only blue-violet-"UV". A yellow filter is used to tame the color balance somewhat.
The tiffen card really showed after all the color balancing, the red and yellow is going to be much subdued.
AngryInch
New Member
This is why I like a little T5 over my tanks, Blue+ and Actinic. I feel it provides a little light too get into shadowed areas and provide a spread of wavelength missing from "pinpoint" LED's.
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J1a
Well-Known Member
Fair enough. Then the next question to ask is, what improvements can be done with LEDs.
Panel and bar style lights improve the spread significantly over small pucks.
This experiment, on the other hand, can hopefully show if the spectrum will play a part in better colored coral.
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