As to the claim that the spectral power distribution have very little effect on plant growth. If you look at real articles outside the hobby, you will find an abundance, showing that this is not the case, so people should stop perpetuating this misinformation.
Yes, but again we are not growing plants outside the hobby. We are growing plants within the context of our hobby and in so doing it turns out that there are so many more factors that affect the growth and health of aquatic plants that the effects of spectral distribution are rendered irrelevant. As I mentioned, no one has been able to show any differences in plants grown with any bulb with a specific spectral distribution versus any other bulb having a different spectral distribution.
as Wooki says, simply consider the wide variation of bulbs being used in the hobby and compare the statistics of success rate or failure rate. If you are so convince that you can produce a difference then I challenge to to prove it with empirical data of your own. Its all very nice and well to regurgitate information from "...articles outside the hobby.." but until someone from inside this hobby can show differences scientifically then data is considered irrelevant.
People from outside the hobby have been coming to this forum for at least a decade assuming that the data they have from their field of expertise for whatever subject automatically applies to this hobby. Water in a bathtub changes everything. Add salt to that water and things are changed even more - most notably, the relationship between algae and plants, which is completely different from any relationship observed in a petrie dish. We have to be very careful when attempting to determine the relevance.
We, as hobbyists have years of empirical testing of your hypothesis because we too at one point had only data from outside the hobby. Our members have performed side by side tests of bulbs with differing spectral properties and found that there was zero correlation with data from outside the hobby.
You can grow excellent healthy plants with whatever spectral distribution you desire. PAR dete4rmines the growth rate, while CO2, nutrition and tank maintenance determine the plant health. It that simple. Here are plants grown with those garish marine type bulbs in the so-called 10,000K regime (K rating is dubious, but that's what the packaging says). This was no problem whatsoever.
Here are plants grown with the so-called 6500K rating. These were absurdly expensive "special plant bulbs"
Here are plants grow with bulbs used in office buildings. These were super cheap bulbs which had the so-called 4000K rating and had an orange cast, which I also found gloomy and disturbing.
Here I combined all the bulbs but found that using predominantly the orange office bulbs, tempered with daylight and blue bulbs produced my favorite color cast:
I have a PAR meter, so made best efforts to keep PAR within the same range. There was no perceptible differences in plant health and the growth rates were very close. Now, this was not strictly scientific as I had no control tank and did not measure plant dry mass, for example. This was strictly empirical and based on visual observation. Others have carried out similar tests with different bulbs and their results were similar, that they could not determine which spectral property produced better plants. Aesthetics are the main priority, and that's how it should be.
If you've ever seen an ADA gallery, in the past, their bulbs had huge green content and they also produced excellent plants health.
I suggest that the misinformation rests squarely on your shoulders until you provide your own proof. In fact, I'm being unfair because that is a very difficult proposition. We lack control of so many variables in the tank it is doubtful you could actually achieve any pertinent conclusions. What we do know however is that you can pick any bulb spectral properties and obtain very similar results - as long as you are able to grow plants problem free in the first place. The OP should be informed that he can pick any color combination that suits him because we have been growing plants for decades and have not met a bulb spectral property that we could not use successfully, despite claims to the contrary from "...articles outside the hobby.."
Cheers,