Attempt to color up SPS under LED

FlyPenFly said:
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/pic/article.cfm?d=158&articleid=3002

A lot of farms have moved to LEDs. Just much more economical while keeping great colors.
Click to expand...

True. Thanks for the link. Hope that inspires more people to try it out.
More people = more experience = more sharing = faster learning :)

However, since LEDs are so much customizable, there are chances of doing it wrong, which in turn affect the colors of corals. But when done right, they can successfully maintain the colors and there are many proven tanks to show the results. LEDs don't have any issues with colors of LPS, Softies etc. In fact, they make them pop and look even better. The challenge is mostly with SPS.
 
While discussing and getting all this valuable info from all you fellow reefers, I had three weeks of outage with my main LED fixture, during which I had a less powerful LED lights on my tank. During those 3 weeks, my "Purple Barney Acropora" had lost its purple color and became brown. (I guess due to increased zoox to compensate for less light). It made me sad. Because, maintaing the color could comparitively be easier than recovering lost color :(

Now that my main fixture is back and I've set it up with less white and more blue for last two weeks, I've noticed its purple color coming back. I've been maintaining pH of 8.1-8.3 recently. It may have played some role too.

I'll post further changes as and when I notice them.
 
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I have been in the process of playing with LEDs over SPS for about 2 years. I started with the 1:1 royal blue to cool white, then moved to the 2:1, and was unhappy with both. I balanced that ratio at around 3:2 for a visual appeal, and my coral seemed mostly happy despite struggling colors.

Then I took the plunge and added 4 UV and 1 red to each 55-led fixture (the 120w ones that are now common). This was the change that gave me faith in LEDs. Suddenly things started to look closer to what I thought they should based on my experience with T5 and MH. I don't know if it was the addition of red or UV, but something helped - a lot! I added a second red which did add some life to the cool white light, but I find myself wanting more!!! :bounce1:

I am now about to redo the entire setup. No more cool whites - I want 4500-5000k neutral, and not that many. I will also add royal blue, blue, 420-ish UV, green (520nm) and deep red (650-660nm).

Let's call out the elephant in the room, shall we? We're talking about what is wrong, but what is right? I'm building in a 24-cluster format. What do you all think about this?

R(650-660nm) 2
G(510-530nm) 2
B(465-470nm) 4
RB(450-465nm) 6
UV(400-410nm) 4
W(4500-5000k) 6

I'll have 4 channels to play with. The whites, the blues and UVs, the reds and greens, and I'll "waste" the final channel for moonlights.
 
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marinemanohio said:
I have been in the process of playing with LEDs over SPS for about 2 years. I started with the 1:1 royal blue to cool white, then moved to the 2:1, and was unhappy with both. I balanced that ratio at around 3:2 for a visual appeal, and my coral seemed mostly happy despite struggling colors.

Then I took the plunge and added 4 UV and 1 red to each 55-led fixture (the 120w ones that are now common). This was the change that gave me faith in LEDs. Suddenly things started to look closer to what I thought they should based on my experience with T5 and MH. I don't know if it was the addition of red or UV, but something helped - a lot! I added a second red which did add some life to the cool white light, but I find myself wanting more!!! :bounce1:

I am now about to redo the entire setup. No more cool whites - I want 4500-5000k neutral, and not that many. I will also add royal blue, blue, 420-ish UV, green (520nm) and deep red (650-660nm).

Let's call out the elephant in the room, shall we? We're talking about what is wrong, but what is right? I'm building in a 24-cluster format. What do you all think about this?

R(650-660nm) 2
G(510-530nm) 2
B(465-470nm) 4
RB(450-465nm) 6
UV(400-410nm) 4
W(4500-5000k) 6

I'll have 4 channels to play with. The whites, the blues and UVs, the reds and greens, and I'll "waste" the final channel for moonlights.
Click to expand...


In my opinion loose more whites, and add 500 NM cyan, 590 NM yellow, and 630 NM red. According to PACSUN info on open letter to LED industery I would go with the following:

R(630nm) 2
Y(590nm) 1
G(510-530nm) 1
CY(500NM) 2
B(480nm) 5
RB(450-465nm) 8
UV(420nm) 4
W(4500-5000k) 1
 
I was just visitng a fellow reefers house and noticed his tank has very bright sps. I asked him what happened. He said nitrates went to 5 from zero. He is using chinese leds only whites and blue. I was surprised but then on further reading found it can be true. Shoot for 5 nitrates and .01 or .02 phosphates. You will have color like you won't believe. Sometimes zero across the board is not that great for corals.
 
my sps coloured up tremendously when I kept my water with some NO3 and zero PO4.
Used to run zero for both readings and the colours are not impressive
 
Adjust the bioload in tank to give about 5 nitrates. When you first started biopellets you started with half the recommended amount. Then slowly you added more pellets to reactor to reduce your nitrates and phosphates. That was the time when you could have tweaked the reactor to leave nitrates 5 and phos around .01.
 
It's good to see several members achieve good SPS coloration when they maintain Nitrates around 5. I'll increase feeding, reduce pellets and monitor the water until I can stabilize it at 5. I'll post if I notice better coloration.

How about Phosphates? Is it good to keep that at detectable level of 0.1 or zero?
 
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Sometimes even if phosphates read 0 there is still some present. So its doesnt matter 0 or 0.01. Nitrates bring the best coloration in sps. I have observed this so far. I am trying but havent reached nitrates 5 yet.
 
Oops, typo... I meant 0.01 phosphates in my post above... But, you got it right :)
Phosphates are so difficult to test. Many test kits for hobbyist are just not good enough at lower levels. And if there are algae in the tank, then it's a misguided zero reading.

Thanks Krakenster for sharing your experience to complement ssdawood's observation.

I can't recall where, but I think I read somewhere that higher phosphates(above 0.3 or 0.5) can tend to brown up SPS.

So, the key point is to maintain Nitrates around 5 and Phosphates at undetectable or around 0.01

I'll work on it and see how it goes.
 
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I didn't read the entire thread (yet), but I just switched from T5s to LEDs. I tried everything possible over the last year, but my corals won't color up and bleach shortly after introduction to the tank.

I picked up a Pacific Sun Hyperion S fixture about 2 weeks ago and will be tracking the progress of the corals. Hopefully things work out because I've been getting frustrated.
 
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