There are a lot of brightly colored corals in nature, but most of them are rather dull-looking. Those aren't the ones collected for the hobby, though.The brightest coloration, judging from examples posted online, is freaky looking - too purple, too red or colored by crayons - and obviously not very natural. I wouldn't describe 20K halide or my 2B:1CW LED's that way.
While Radiums (or 20K lighting in general) took lighting more toward "natural" (and I don't think anyone from pre-20K days would argue it) then I would argue the trend we're talking about which started in T5's and has translated to LED is going "away from natural". Do we care about that? Maybe, maybe not (personally, yes)....but from the photo-evidence it's true.
Like I said earlier, we really can't get 'natural' without significant costs associated.
If you're going for natural, you are, indeed missing something - violet light. Just as much power is put out into violet light as is 'blue' light by the sun and on both the reef crest and deeper waters. In the article you linked to above, it specifically mentions that you'd need roughly 45W/m2 of 400-440nm light to be close to natural, and 40W/m2 of 440-480nm. Lemme tell ya, it takes a crapton of violet LEDs to get close to natureNo, incorrect to say it's missing something unless you can define what perspective you're coming from. Compared with nature, it's missing very little to nothing. Arguably some sub-450nm light, but which - if any - and how much are very much open to debate. Of course I'll concede if we're just talking about personal opinion on favorite colors to bring out....but I'm really comparing to nature to the extent possible. I don't know what other "standard" there is. (And opinion is fine as long as you know what you like and like what you have!)
Yep, most people only want that blue color. While I like the natural tones sunlight gives, I don't want exactly that over my tank.Actually some discharge lights have come really close to the spectrum of sunlight....is plasma more than vaporware? Anywho...I don't think anyone in the hobby has been heavily involved with emulating daylight since the Iwasaki+03 days. The reason? Most corals we keep these days are not corals from surface waters. Those using actual daylight (solatubes, greenhouse, skylights) are the only real exception I can think of. Should be interesting to the "full spectrumers" to see the results those people get. (Both the good and bad, of course.)
There are lots of red corals in nature. Acans are a big one off the top of my head. I wouldn't really consider the color to be camouflage, more like a sunscreen.And as mentioned, if you take a red coral, it probably doesn't look red in nature. Adding red light is OK as the camouflage probably isn't needed in captivity anyway, but steps away from the natural setting and ignores the reason for the the red coloration in the first place.
-Matt
Hey, someone's gotta keep me on the straight and narrow. LOLP.S. Thanks for the continuing discussion! This is great, and the one of the main reasons I like hanging out here!