How much white versus blue light? Algae Problems...

[MizTanks]

Tell me if my LED's are on to long? To much white? To much blue? Here is the schedule I've been using. Another reefer suggested my whites are on for to long. All my corals are doing great with this schedule though. But still this brown crap on my SB persists :(

10min ramping for 10hrs max intensity is 30/50%

Time 9:00 9:10 9:20 9:30 9:40 9:50 10:00 10:10 10:20 10:30 10:40 10:50 11:00 11:10 11:20 11:30 11:40 11:50 12:00 12:10 12:20 12:30 12:40 12:50 13:00 13:10 13:20 13:30 13:40 13:50 14:00 14:10 14:20 14:30 14:40 14:50 15:00 15:10 15:20 15:30 15:40 15:50 16:00 16:10 16:20 16:30 16:40 16:50 17:00 17:10 17:20 17:30 17:40 17:50 18:00 18:10 18:20 18:30 18:40 18:50 19:00
White light intensity 0 2 3 5 6 8 9 11 12 14 15 16 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 27 28 29 29 29 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 29 29 29 28 27 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 16 15 14 12 11 9 8 6 5 3 2 0
Blue light intensity 0 3 5 8 10 13 15 18 20 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 40 42 43 45 46 47 48 48 49 49 50 50 50 50 50 49 49 48 48 47 46 45 43 42 40 39 37 35 33 31 29 27 25 23 20 18 15 13 10 8 5 3 0
Hour to start lights 9:00
Max White/Color Light Intensity 30
Max Blue Light Intensity 50

[jimsflies]

You might try dialing your whites back to see if there is an improvement. I'm not running as much white as you do. My sunrise program ramps the blues from 0 to 80% over one hour...during the same sunrise period my whites ramp from 0 to 25% over 2 hours (so tank starts out looking very blue and gradually gets more white). For the sunset program, I ramp the whites down quickly over 45 minutes from 25% to 0. But blues during sunset go from 80% to 0 over a 2.5 hour period of time...so the tank ends the day with 1.75 hours of just blues.

My midday program duration is about 8.5 hours of blues at 80% and whites at 25%...except, I do have cloud cover 20% of the time that ramps the whites back to 12%.

So in other words, I'm running mostly blues. And the corals I keep seem to do fine. I'm not having too many algae issues either...considering I just did the first water change since the Ann Arbor swap in March (had to do a water change because I took frags to the Flint swap a couple weeks ago). I also don't feed phyto and am really careful about other feeding because I don't have a skimmer and my tank is small.

Tanks go through algae stages. Especially if you start with bare rock, I think it is easier for certain algae to get established since there isn't any pre-existing growth to keep it in check and it outgrows other more desirables (e.g., coral). It may be a matter of working through the algae cycles until the tank stabilizes.

It is my understanding that in general algae is more efficient at processing full spectrum lighting (white light). Whereas corals have adapted to processing blue light since it penetrates water better and corals tend to be collected some distance below the water surface. Obviously it depends a lot on the individual coral species (and algae species for that matter) as corals reefs can be shallow but also be 150 feet deep (some as deep at 450 feet). Obviously there is a lot of overlap with conditions in which corals and algae grow. Here's a quick chart showing how blue light becomes the predominate light as depth increases (be sure to convert from meters to feet).

9784

[MizTanks]

Wow! Thank you Jim! For taking the time to explain this to me :) Tremendous help!

[MizTanks]

Ok just finished adjusting my whites. Ramping up to 20% max by 2pm then off. So they go from 0-20% in 5hrs.
The blues I left alone...for now with max being 50%.
Don't wanna make to many changes to quickly :)