Too much white light?

[RogueGrown]

Could having too much white light create an algae bloom? I ask because I have an AI prime and I recently lengthened my days and while doing so I increased the % to each color slightly.

After reading what other people's setting are with the same fixture I find some people are running red and green 0% and white at a max of 20% and the rest at 75%. I adjusted to these setting to find that in less than an hour a couple corals perked up more but also more appealing to the eye.
Could this vibrant darkness help keep diatoms at bay possibly??? (Tank is 4 months)

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[Ron Reefman]

Most nuisance algae seems to like the red spectrum and therefore many reefers turn it off or use black electrical tape to block it if they can't turn it off. And the white is made up of red, green and blue, so more white does add more red.

That said, the light is only just the last thing the algae needed to flourish. It must already have had enough food which you should also try to control.

Your tank is only 4 months old, don't let the diatoms or algae outbreaks discourage you. It's extremely common in new tanks for the first 6 to 12 months until things stabilize in the tank. You could even get a bacteria bloom like cyano. Do your best to control it, but know that it's not so much that you are doing something wrong as much as it's just the nutrients in the tank causing blooms that use up the extra nutrients and then die off... which can help cause some other bloom. Keep things as stable as you can and things will get better.

[sde1500]

Yep, my tank is just a year old, been through a couple bouts with some serious GHA and some other stuff.

But corals use mainly the blue light. My light is just two channels, blue maxes out at 70, white and a little red on channel two maxes out at 30. I had put it higher and I noticed more algae on the sand. Blue feeds the corals, white/red/green makes the tank look more pleasing to the eye.

[Timfish]

Like Ron Reefman said your system is going to go through cycles of different algae types while it's maturing the first 6-12 months. I would not be trying to fix algae issues by playing with the lighting spectrum. Nuisance algae will adapt faster than your corals will and you need the corals to be competing with the nuisance algae for nutrients.

Coloration in corals is a very complicated subject though. Most aquarists like a heavy blue componet as that makes many fluorescing proteins "pop" but the other parts of the spectrum are needed for coloration also. Here's three examples to help get a little better idea of what's going on and to highlight Ron's point how lighting is always a compromise :

First is Lobophillia hemphrecki which adjusts it's fluorescing proteins to the wavelengths available. If you get a really nice orange or red specimen having a lot of blue will cause it to shift it's proteins over a period of weeks from those that fluoresce orange and red to green.

Second is Montipora setosa which makes a little bit of pink fluorescing protein and a whole lot of red chromo protein. Not having enough white light is going to cause it to look brown and since it doesn't seem to make a range of coloring proteins it's not going to change it's color much. (As an aside the pink varieties I've seen are invariably partially bleached.)

Third are corals that have purple chromo proteins like Acropora valida. They are using combination of chromo proteins reflecting blue and red light and absorbing green and yellow bands (we don't know yet what they are doing with the green and yellow light). Not having the right ratio is going to give the purple coloration a more subdued color.

And to complicate things further the wavelengths the fluorescing and chromo proteins react too can shift from species to species.

[RogueGrown]

Like Ron Reefman said your system is going to go through cycles of different algae types while it's maturing the first 6-12 months. I would not be trying to fix algae issues by playing with the lighting spectrum. Nuisance algae will adapt faster than your corals will and you need the corals to be competing with the nuisance algae for nutrients.

Coloration in corals is a very complicated subject though. Most aquarists like a heavy blue componet as that makes many fluorescing proteins "pop" but the other parts of the spectrum are needed for coloration also. Here's three examples to help get a little better idea of what's going on and to highlight Ron's point how lighting is always a compromise :

First is Lobophillia hemphrecki which adjusts it's fluorescing proteins to the wavelengths available. If you get a really nice orange or red specimen having a lot of blue will cause it to shift it's proteins over a period of weeks from those that fluoresce orange and red to green.

Second is Montipora setosa which makes a little bit of pink fluorescing protein and a whole lot of red chromo protein. Not having enough white light is going to cause it to look brown and since it doesn't seem to make a range of coloring proteins it's not going to change it's color much. (As an aside the pink varieties I've seen are invariably partially bleached.)

Third are corals that have purple chromo proteins like Acropora valida. They are using combination of chromo proteins reflecting blue and red light and absorbing green and yellow bands (we don't know yet what they are doing with the green and yellow light). Not having the right ratio is going to give the purple coloration a more subdued color.

And to complicate things further the wavelengths the fluorescing and chromo proteins react too can shift from species to species.
Thank you for the detailed reply!!! I am not worried about my algae blooms at this point but just want to make sure I can keep them at a minimum. I had a really nasty bloom a couple months ago and backed my light down in % and duration, along with water changes it started to fade away.

Until last night I had my red running about 40% and my white up to 60% just under my blues and UV. Now I've turned the red off and have my white going come on later than blue to max at 30% for a shorter period and turn off before the blue. (The heavy blue at night is very relaxing to look at in bed 😊) plus as you described the proteins "pop".

Being a 20g tank with no sump I find myself topping off every night. I have a salinity swing from 1.024 to 1.025 is what I'm finding and nothing seems to show any stress during. I also have two hydor wavemakers and 2 AC70s one is filled with live rubble and the other has chaeto. I just hooked up the fuge one those weekend so in the next coming Weeks I'm hoping to see a difference.


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