Christian Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 I have an LED light controler and it does lighting storms what is your thoughts on have the lighting do that on a reef tank? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard L Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 IMO its a silly feature that manufacturers can play up which costs them nothing to add. Maybe there's some research out there that tries to validate it but my feeling is that the fish are already dealing with many unnatural stress factors in the captive environments we provide and we probably shouldn't pile more on with a Pink Floyd laser light show. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jestep Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 It's a horrible feature. I did it for fun for a few days on my AI Sol, and every anemone in my tank decided to take a few laps around the tank. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reburn Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 +1 million. Silly feature so you can try and impress non reefers and really irritate your coral in the process. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mFrame Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 I'll quietly disagree to some extent. Do I think it's essential to use for your tank? No. Like any other feature I think it can be overused and abused, but I actually lean toward using some of the weather features (like lightning, cloud, etc). My thinking is that the same way variation in wind and sunlight make your trees and plants grow stronger, a bit of lighting variation in your tank should do the same thing to corals. You're training the animals to accept a little variation in their environment which SHOULD make them more hardy when you have power outages, clogged powerheads, etc. It's no different that what our tanks were experiencing five years ago as MH and T5 bulbs aged over 6 months and changed their light output. I've seen tons of pictures of what happens to corals at low and high tide in the wild and I can definitely say that most of our tanks are babied. I often wonder if that's why some reefers have a harder time with their tanks, as there are plenty of success stories from people who basically neglect their tanks. I also know that many reefers have incredibly expensive corals that thrive in their tanks specifically because the owner monitors and controls every element of the tank. Whether or not that is setting the tank up for an eventual disaster when something goes out of whack is a whole separate discussion. All that said, I wouldn't go crazy and have a lightning storm every hour, but I think setting the cloud feature to randomly occur and dim light by 20% for a half hour creates some interest for the tank and does no harm. Just understand that the flashier effects are really for you, not for the tank inhabitants, and that overuse could have a detrimental effect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rockstarwiggle Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 +1 on mFrame(Mike). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reburn Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Mike I will quietly agree with you on the cloud mode. I have voiced my thoughts on the lighting mode. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christian Posted January 13, 2015 Author Share Posted January 13, 2015 My lights are 5 of the ecoxotic stunner 48" led Color order White Blue White/red Blue White And I use the one touch controler system And I don't think I get to pick when the storms happen I want to say it just does it at random times but I have not played around with it a lot too. I also run 3X 250 watt MH for about 5 hours at the highest point of the day Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timfish Posted January 13, 2015 Share Posted January 13, 2015 I think the "lightning" options are just marketng hype. But I'm definitely with Mike about corals being spoiled and not being able to adapt because of conditioning. Looking at the range of variables listed by Kleypas1 for almost a 1000 reefs (Borneman listed them as well in his book on corals) it could easily be argued we're growing our corals in static systems, not stable. On the surface this might seem ok but we have research that shows corals "learn" their environment2,3 so it seems to me we can easily be growing corals that cannot tolerate any change. (Seems like a good argument for controllers is to vary environmental conditions so frags are more adaptable.) 1 http://www.ronshimek.com/references/Kleypas_et_al_1999_Environmental_Limits_To_Coral_Reef_Development.pdf 2 http://www.mendeley.com/catalog/experience-shapes-susceptibility-reef-coral-bleaching 3 http://jeb.biologists.org/content/211/7/1050.long Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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