Turbocharge your BLUE Stony Corals with 370nm UV Spotlights

The vast majority of reefers reading this definitely don’t need a specialized spotlight for exotic ultraviolet spectrum – but since when is the reefing hobby one of necessity?

However if you’re interested in getting the sickest blue coloration from SPS corals, especially Acros, then you will certainly be interested in the new 370nm UVA LED spotlight from Vital Wave.

Blue Acros in shallow water absolutely glow with fluorescence, even in plain white daylight due to the an abundance of UV and near UV wavelength.

This spotlight uses a single 370nm UV LED chip, probably powered around 5 watts, and a single large lens to get a wide beam angle for maximum spread. This wavelength of UV light will do very little for coral growth but for shallow water Acros, it should crank up the blue fluorescence like nothing else available to reefers today.

Again it bears repeating that handling this kind of spectrum is like handling radioactive material – 370nm will nuke any medium light SPS and it would bleach any low light Leptoseris right before your eyes. If you’ve got a really SPS specific reef aquarium system with tons of shallow water Acros, the Vital Wave 370nm UVA LED spotlight would be a neat one to highlight celebrated strains like the Oregon Blue Tort or new ones like the Blueberry Shortcake.

That being said, best LED lights already do an awesome job of rendering all the colors of aquarium corals, and the UV in the 400 to 430nm range is probably ‘good enough’ for virtually all reefers. But if you wanted to push the envelope, dipping below 400nm would be a very interesting experiment.

The Vital Wave 370nm UVA will probably be made only in limited numbers and likely won’t be distributed much outside Japan, but we can still dream of cranking blue Acros to 11 with this very specialized spectrum.

Blue SPS corals like this California Tort can really glow when given the proper short wavelength spectrum

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Jake Adams

Jake Adams has been an avid marine aquarist since the mid 90s and has worked in the retail side of the marine aquarium trade for more than ten years. He has a bachelor’s degree in Marine Science and has been the managing editor of ReefBuilders.com since 2008. Jake is interested in every facet of the marine aquarium hobby from the concepts to the technology, rare fish to exotic corals, and his interests are well documented through a very prolific career of speaking to reef clubs and marine aquarium events, and writing articles for aquarium publications across the globe. His primary interest is in corals which Jake pursues in the aquarium hobby as well as diving the coral reefs of the world.