Lets talk about ~Lighting~

[dabears26]

Great topic...Got a q....How long will it take to start to notice the growth differce in my corals now that i have switched over to metal halide..I am still using 10k bulbs and actinics... Wattage Doubled almost tripled from 192 watts from pc's to 500 watts that these produce..??..It,s been about 2 weeks..Since the change..

 

[sryder]

just one question mike, Is the lucky lady hiring?

 

[mojoreef]

But in your earlier posts you said pigments were in both the zoox and coral. Is that whole process of transfering energy to reaction center pigments by inductive resonance within the zoox and not the coral?

The pigments with in the coral itself are their for, protection, or fluorescence, not for the transfer and thus not growth. The pigments with in the zoox are for heat dispersion and/or fluorescence. Seperate system not directly linked to the transfer of energy.

Whats is the coral doing vs. the zoox after this extended flash of light? Is it same process that happens during the flash?

The coral is the administrator. It controls the transfer of carbons to itself and waste back to the zoox. It also monitors the oxygen levels so that it can control the release of enymes that control saturation, along with a host of other simular processes.

Does the coral itself (not zoox) get any benefit from or use of direct exposure to light or does it just flouresce?

Not directly.

How long will it take to start to notice the growth differce in my corals now that i have switched over to metal halide..I

No idea, lol. remember an acro that is the size of a basketball, is still only the thin layer of tissue (2 cell layers deep). So if you peeled what is actually the coral it would be smaller then your thumb nail. The skeliton is basically just a waste deposit area.


Sryder that would depend on your assets??


Mike

 

[kimoyo]

Mike, thanks for the help so far. Just a few more questions.

Let me see if I got what your saying about the flash thing. The zoox contain pigments, such as chlorophyll and carotenoid peridinin in a 1 to 4 ratio. The carotenoid peridinin acts like an antennae (receptor) with a switch that tells the chlorophyll to start collecting light for photosynthesis (is this correct?). But to turn on the switch you have to hit the carotenoid peridinin with some intense lighting.

Why can't the carotenoid peridinin switch be thrown with less intense lighting?

After the switch is thrown, the chlorophyll starts accepting light for photosynthesis and intense lighting for the carotenoid peridinin is no longer needed.




Edited out questions that I found answers too

 

[kimoyo]

Hey Mike,

I've been reading a bit more but still having trouble understanding this.

The concept of the flash is that in take an ammount of light at a certain intencity to excite the excitons once done the transfer to reaction center pigments by inductive resonance......


....So from a purely energy budjet stand point you could get the process started with a flash and then just supply normal average light intencity for the balance of the time for the CORAL to get all it needs from the photosynthitic process.

I still don't see what/how the flash does to get the process started that normal intensity light doesn't. I had heard that you get better growth from doing this though that why I'm so interested in it.

 

[mojoreef]

Hey Paul I will try to answer in more detail when I get a break. The concept of the flash method is being done to help propagate corals for reintroduction into the wild. I put it out thier as something kind of neat, but I dont see to much of a practical application for us. The concept they are trying is to growing high light demanding corals under a tight budget, so very little in the way of good lighting. What they are doing is using very low lighting to recreate what would be the average day on a reef, with various time of intence sunlight and overcast. The flash of light gets the process started by creating a photosynthetic cycle through a highly intence flash, from their they run normal lighting for a period of time and then the flash again.
The overall concept is kind of a bare minimium approach, the result would be a coral with a ton of zoox (and thus very brown) to compensate for the lower lighting.


Mike

 

[kimoyo]

If you have a chance any info would be really cool, or is there an article I can read about it? I started reading through your resource gallery on lighting and there are some really good articles in there. Thanks.