Adding red and green leds

B

billyzbear

Active member
Wasn't sure where to post this.
I have a 6' x 2' tank. I have 62 royal blue, 14 blue and 14 neutral white leds. 2 4ft t5 with actnic+ blubs. This is an older pic but looks like this http://s1325.photobucket.com/user/b...pg.html?&_suid=140469958309507614941428886734
I took the UV leds out and added RB. Some corals were changing color and some of the leds melted.
Anyways the space right down the center of the tank is where I'm thinking of adding 6 red and 6 green. Too many? Not enough? I was thinking of having them on seperate channels so I can adjust them independently. Would this be a must?
Please share your thoughts and experience on adding red and green leds.
 
I added red and green to my system and it did help bring out more color in my corals. If you have each color on its own separate channels so they are independently adjustable the numbers seem about right. If they are going to be combined I would use 6 red and four green.
 
The "UV" LEDs are an important part of the spectrum though with actinic bulbs as supplement you get the "UV" from them. As far as Improving color the best red/green combo you can do right now would be to use a three channel system to allow dimming of each spectrum, Lime, cyan, and true reds(around 630 to 640nm) to supplement your royal blues, blues and whites. The bigest challenge with adding additional spectrum LEDs though will be color blending and even distribution of the light. 3-up stars work well for this but you would want to add 12 or so 3-up stars to get good coverage, which will require three dimmable drivers and a way to dim them.

Another simpler option to improve color is to replace the whites with a high CRI whites like the Luxeon Vero 10, 90 CRI 5000k chips or the nichia 90+ CRI whites. Instead of doing the red/green leds. There are many pro's and con's to each approach but mostly it comes down to complexity of the build.
 
I was thinking adding more red and green would bring out more color. Greens look washed out to me. Yellow coral in other tanks look yellow but in my tank lime green but I tend to like it more blue. That's the main reasoning behind adding green and red. I do have some leds that have more red in them than NW, warm whites. Could I use them?

I first had 48 rb leds and 4 4' t5's. Coral looked good but wasn't blue enough but good I could have played more with different bulbs. Kinda hard with a 6 foot tank. Took 2 t5 out and added 14 ww leds, 14 nw leds and 28 uv leds? I would have to count again but around there. Alot of coral were shifting to green. An oregon mummy eye turned light purple. Some of those melted so changed them out and bought another brand uv led but only 14 and added the blue leds. The greening effect was still happening but so so. Other brand uv leds started melting so took them out and replaced them with more royal blue. Melting took about 5-6 months. Second uv led I was told wouldn't melt but did, after was told because of heat. Even though you could hold heatsink with your hand, it was warm but not hot. I may add some uv leds to this build because it looks cool and I have some but only a few.
 
Violet LED melting is caused by terribly poor quality plastic domes, nothing else. The UV degrades and browns the plastic causing heat build up in front of the diode, further and faster UV degradation, and eventually melted or more correctly burnt plastic. It's a manufacturing defect that only Rapid seemed to get correct in their very old style LEDs all the others like them out there burned up eventually.

Still the only ones I'm trusting 100% are the ones from Rapid, haven't yet tried the ones from www.reefll.com/ yet but they look to be the same Semi chips, so I'd expect the same good results.

The Green shift was caused by florescent green pigment development something many of use seek out in our corals, many corals get bluer under the same condition it just depends on the coral strains you have. the mummy eye may have actaly been bleaching from the increased UV and if more slowly acclimated the original color may have intensified, but sometimes it is impossible to predict how colors will change with different light spectrums.

If added in addition to your current whites the warm whites will bump up the orange spectrum and the red spectrum and improve the color of reds in your tank mostly but may have a small positive impact on the yellows as well.
 
430NM violets is as low as I would be comfy going in purples, for green, make sure you get the lime not the green. and for reds you obviously want the 660nm.
 
Thought I should also mention most Reds need to be on a different driver then anything but Purple.
 
Amoo said:
430NM violets is as low as I would be comfy going in purples, for green, make sure you get the lime not the green. and for reds you obviously want the 660nm.
Click to expand...

why 660nm? it does little for coral coloration and really only promotes algea growth. the research has been done and posted in numerouse threads and articles. coral can use some of that red light but nusiance algea benifits more. lower red like in the 630-640nm range is as high as any coral pigmentation will benifit from it and our eyes will benifit from that lower red more than the 660nm. Many corals flouresce deeper red from lower nm red light but not from far red.

The 660nm kick started cause MH and flouresent produce that as a byproduct of making light not becuase it was intentenal to have much present. Jurry is still out whether a very, very, small amount of far red is good for coral's other biological functions(and in very small amounts it may be) but if fluorescent lights are involved let them provide it. Likewise warm whites and almost all high CRI whites will provide that small amount of far red anyway.
 
Last edited:
Peak for Chlorophyll A is at 430nm and 665nm and Chlorophyll B is at 453nm and 642nm. Peak for Cyano is 615nm and 671nm.

Keep in mind we're talking about 6 reds out of a total of 102.

If it were me I would probably do closer to what you suggested and blend my CW and NW depending on spectrum leds he has and maybe even cut some back, then add the 6 reds, 6 limes and a few 430nm violets.

I'm not really interested in trying to replicate a MH, though some companies and people are, I personally try harder to fill the peaks we're left with/without after applying our whites.
 
Best way of controlling cyano is through water quality, don't forget that almost all fluoresent tubes that have become hobby standard have high red peaks between 615nm and 630nm but very little relative light near or above 660nm and they never get blamed for nuisance algea.

Replicate what works I always say.

Right though, OP is concerned with improved visual impact and aesthetics not coral growth, so lower nm reds give the most impact here. (bigest concern will be distribution and blending of additional colors to avoid disco) corals are adapted to utilizing blue light over red light, despite chlorophyll peaks and studies (mostly from terestrial plants) the deeper you go under water the less and less red light the corals can get in nature so the red end of spectrum is far less important to them. there is no doubt that zooxanthellae can utilize the red end of the spectrum, they just don't need it and it benefits nuisance algea more than the corals we keep.

Don't suppose you know where I can get a reliable 430nm violet. that one place that can't be mentioned dosen't cut the mustard, they burn after a few months at 500mA even though they are silicone lenses the diodes burn up with fan cooled heatsinks and staying under 90 F.

I'm a firm believer that we should strive to supply at least in small amounts the full spectrum that sunlight gives coral at depth in the reef. just heavyier on the blues for our own benifit in producing more colorful corals :)

It just needs to be well blended which is hard with only adding a few colored leds so the higher CRI whites look good for simpler builds as I mentioned above, or using the combo of NW and WW the OP has alredy may get him where he wants to be.

Always try the simplest improvement first and build from there, in his case adding in his warm whites would be the best and first place to start and go from there since there's little to no cost to him to do so.
 
Last edited:
Amoo said:
I've not been able to find a terribly reliable source to be completely honest. I'm trying these at the moment:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KJPUNI0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I buy most all my other leds from Rapid. I'm just about to install these this week, so can't speak to reliability, but if price is a factor they probably won't last. The good news is at $13 for a 4 pack it's cheaper then replacing t5s :P
Click to expand...

Those don't look all that promising and kind of look like they are phosphor coated from the pic which may just be wrong. Good luck though, maybe you stumbled on to something.......
....the only down side is a T5 would be a whole lot brighter than 4 of those and last a lot longer than most of the cheap LEDs I've burned up. I'm going on 2 years with a pair of VHO actinics and T5 should last much longer if just using them for supplemental lighting......

price isn't always a factor, I can say for certain Rapid's violets are/have been cheaper than some of the others I've burned to a crisp and the first Rapid violet I ever bought that looked like those, is still going strong with no signs of damage after several years.....right next to several others that have burned up all on the same heatsink and led string.......
 
Personally I'm just going to stick with the actinic+ t5 for UV light, if I need more I'll get just actinic. I don't like dealing with burnt leds. I really like the color from the VHO's actinics but they give off too much heat and cost to much to run. Being in socal just sucks. When I own my own house again I'm going solar, add vho's and a chiller.

The first place I got the uv leds was in china. When I complained about burning they sent me 12 replacements, I paid for 30. They told me the replacements won't burn but cost more. I guess that's why they sent 12. From led fedy
The second place says on thier website which we all know, as a guys name, that they won't burn. When they did, I was given a chance to replace them with leds at cost...Why should he eat the 20 or so dollars to replace them with RB?
If these guys http://ecotechmarine.com/products/radion/radion-xr30w-pro/ are adding all these other colors why can't I? Right down the center, one or so per foot of tank. My biggest fear is disco but think the t5 will mute that some. I worry about coverage. Can a led cover 2 feet being 3-4 inchs off the water? For red I could use WW which already have and could help blend, instead of green use lime which won't be as green. They are also using yellow and indigo. Indigo is orange? I do have way more RB than they do though, I do like the pop.
Getting late, I'll have to think about it.
 
zachts said:
why 660nm? it does little for coral coloration and really only promotes algea growth. the research has been done and posted in numerous threads and articles.
Click to expand...
I've heard this before.. but have yet to find any of this proof...Do you have any sources handy?
 
Last edited:
oreo57 said:
I've heard this before.. but have yet to find any of this proof...Do you have any sources handy?
Click to expand...

Most all the studies are referenced in the "open letter to the led industry" thread. I'll have to go hunting again, but I read some interesting stuff a while back from a bio fuel researcher using algea in their bio reactors, mostly fueled by the sun...
 
zachts said:
Most all the studies are referenced in the "open letter to the led industry" thread. I'll have to go hunting again, but I read some interesting stuff a while back from a bio fuel researcher using algea in their bio reactors, mostly fueled by the sun...
Click to expand...

thats OK.. I did some digging.. I see where people are coming from.. besides not all species behave the same anyways..

But I'll add this :
We would like to make some notes about the algae bloom concerns. Many hobbyists believe that, due to high photosynthetic activity, the presence of wavelengths longer than 620nm may facilitate to algae growth, and therefore any radiation in this range should be eliminated from the fixture. This approach will, unfortunately, deprive us from enjoying the beautiful shades of non-fluorescent orange and red color present in many corals and fish.

The algae problem can be resolved radically by maintaining good water parameters in the tank, and particularly, by maintaining constant phosphate deficiency in the water. An American oceanographer Alfred C. Redfield discovered in 1934 an empirical stoichiometric ratio of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus present in marine phytoplankton. It later turned out that most living organisms require these nutrients in roughly the same proportion.

However, corals are better suited to live in the conditions of phosphorus deficiency and are capable of consuming phosphorus even when it is present in minute amounts (moreover, corals obtain a significant part of required phosphorus through food, rather than in the form of dissolved in water phosphate). Lower algae require more phosphorus for growth and cannot thrive when it is lacking. Thus, by maintaining a very low phosphate (typically below 0.03ppm) and a nitrate ratio slightly exceeding the Redfield ratio over phosphate[1], i.e. in the range of 1-3ppm, algae problem in the tank can be eliminated completely
Click to expand...
.
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/201...ider&utm_medium=slider&utm_campaign=clickthru

Of course they also favored higher reds over 660nm... eventually.. mostly for aesthetics..

Who knows..
 
Before I get going I'll preface by saying I've seen all of the "open letter" discussion and the Advancedaquarist article before this thread was ever started. The one skepticism I have about the advancedaquarist article is you don't have to look very hard to figure out that article comes with a "this is where you can buy our light".

I've said in some places before that just because a company puts a light out with certain spectrums doesn't mean it's the correct spectrums. I have no doubt that almost all of the major aquarium manufacturers have done research similar what that article presents. I'm very happy reefll shared their research as I think more companies doing this would further the industry as a whole.

Take a look at the RapidLED new puck, tons of violets and lime. 5NW, 6RB, 5B, 12Lime (yes 12), 5 Violet, 4 Deep Red.

New Maxspect Mazzarra-P, 4 CW, 2WW, 4 RB, 4B, 1 400-410, 1 410-420.

New Ecotech Radion XR15w, 4CW, 4RB, 4 B, 2 Green, 1 DR, 1 Yellow, 2 Indigo, 2 Violet.

The list goes on. My point being, all of these companies do extensive research into spectrums, hang their fixtures over tanks, gather results...etc.

Heck, take a look at the OP's tank. I have no doubt he already has sufficient spectrum coverage to grow corals. One experienced reefer may walk into his house and flat out love the coloration. He feels he's missing something and is looking to add. The fact that he wants to add both Red and Green tells me that he knows what he's looking for as they are both colors that are going to accomplish the same things brightness and intensity wise.

So who's right? IMO nobody and everybody at the same time. These should be the guidelines:

Provide the full spectrum for growth for everything you plan to put in your tank (easier said then done, but we have a lot of data).

Don't inhibit growth of the things we add based on lighting.

Add colors/white until you're visually happy.

Profit?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

vlangel
75g Lurking danger and Leafy Seadragons
14 15 16
Replies
301
Views
12K
vlangel
vlangel
R
Phytoplankton on Red / Blue LEDs only
Replies
5
Views
2K
ReefTankAllTheWay
R
o2manyfish
o2manyfish - 750g Reef Update - New Fish, New Clams and New Corals
Replies
10
Views
1K
five.five-six
five.five-six
Drummer98
Do I need to worry about this ??
Replies
4
Views
1K
Drummer98
Drummer98
Easygoing1
PFO Aquatics SOLARIS Rebuild And Questions
Replies
8
Views
2K
oreo57
oreo57
Back
Top