Blue light and red

[atoll]

I notice some manufacturers of ATS use both blue and red LED's in their units. What if any are the benefits of blue light combined with red? Some manufacturers suggest the blue light increases the speed of growth of GHA. Your thoughts and experiences please. Thanks.

[SantaMonica]

Not enough benefit to using blue, if you ask me. Unless of course you buy the light already made.

[atoll]

Not enough benefit to using blue, if you ask me. Unless of course you buy the light already made.

have you tried adding blue to the reds? As well as not instead of.

[SantaMonica]

Yes I've used blues before, but it was a pre-made plant-grow light.

[rleahaines]

have you tried adding blue to the reds? As well as not instead of.

A lot of the grow lights out there have blue and red mixes. They claim it works best for the type of plants grown under grow lights.

I use two of them on my waterfall scrubber and they don't seem to be much different than all red. One thing I did find through trial and error is that the blue LED's for some reason are more intense and tend to white out or burn the algae more than the red. Not sure why scientifically, but this is my experience. I would not recommend going all blue. All red [using the proper spectrum] works.

Some people swear that adding blue and violet helps the algae growth. My experience is that having red LED in places you don't want it causes algae growth in places I don't want it.

I have a LED display fixture that they put red LED lights in along with white and blue. Almost immediately got algae growth in areas that stopped growing algae years before.

Some of the full spectrum lights are not what you want for a reef or FOWLR tank. Just my 2 cents.