Chinese Black Box LED's

[Heuristic]

I keep seeing threads about these boxes, but I'm struggling to find the answers I'm looking for so I figured I would just create a thread and see how others are using there's.


I currently have 2 Vipra Spectra LED Black Boxes(though they all seem to function pretty much the exact same)over my tank and they seem to be working well for what they are.

However, I am struggling to figure out a good schedule for when the blues should turn on and how long the whites should be on. Also, what intensity should I be running the whites vs the blues.

I have seen people mentioning 100% blues and 5% whites and things all over the board.

I was looking to hear some peoples experience with them and not only what %'s they seem to like, but how long for each one

:bounce3::bounce3:

 

[bif24701]

I keep seeing threads about these boxes, but I'm struggling to find the answers I'm looking for so I figured I would just create a thread and see how others are using there's.





I currently have 2 Vipra Spectra LED Black Boxes(though they all seem to function pretty much the exact same)over my tank and they seem to be working well for what they are.



However, I am struggling to figure out a good schedule for when the blues should turn on and how long the whites should be on. Also, what intensity should I be running the whites vs the blues.



I have seen people mentioning 100% blues and 5% whites and things all over the board.



I was looking to hear some peoples experience with them and not only what %'s they seem to like, but how long for each one



:bounce3::bounce3:

That's pretty much it. Blues at 100% then add whites until you reach the desired look you want. Blues are the main coral growing LEDs so most just run them 100% and add other channels to balance the color. That's pretty much it. Keep light on peak intensity for at least 6 hours with an hour each ramp up and down.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Ron Reefman]

My best guess is that most reefers with leds run the blue:white ratio at something like 2:1 and maybe 3:1. More than that and you run the risk of not having enough white to help keep pigment production up and the corals will loss some color. They can survive at 100% blue and zero white, it's just not the optimum.

How long you run the blues before you add in the white is strictly a human pleasure... the idea of a soft sunrise or sunset. Your corals don't have eyes and really couldn't give a crap. That said, my fixtures do serious sunrise and sunset, like 4 hours of regular increase and decrease. Does this help my corals? Heck no, but I enjoy watching the tank change throughout the day!

What power levels to start at or to set as an optimum is a much more difficult thing to resolve without a PAR meter. Start with lower settings like 60% blue and 20% or 30% white. Then every week or two, bump the power up 5% or 10% on each channel. I had fixtures very much like your Viparspectra's and I ended at 90% blue and 40% white.

HOWEVER, I'm not recommending those settings for you! Those were my settings over a 24" deep tank with the fixtures 10" off the water and mostly sps and lps corals. Knowing hoe deep your tank is, and how high they are off the water are needed to make even a rough guesstimate.

A PAR meter is the easiest way to set the power levels. Borrow one from a fellow club member, ask the LFS if they have one you can barrow or rent, and you can find them for rent online.

Otherwise, try the 'canary in a coalmine' approach. Get a small frag of a red cap monti and set it in your tank higher than all the other corals. When you raise the light intensity too high, the red cap will start to bleach before any other corals. At that point, dial the power back a bit (5% to 10%) and you should be good to go.

 

[Heuristic]

Awesome. This is exactly what I was looking.

Currently I had to blues coming on at around 6:00 AM until about 10:00 PM set at 60%. I think this is too much blues and probably isn't helping any algae issues(though it's pretty minor). My whites come on around 12:00 PM and turn off at 8:00. I am thinking I might have the lights on a little too long overall? Or are most people having them running for 14 hours or so?

 

[Elricsfate]

Awesome. This is exactly what I was looking.

Currently I had to blues coming on at around 6:00 AM until about 10:00 PM set at 60%. I think this is too much blues and probably isn't helping any algae issues(though it's pretty minor). My whites come on around 12:00 PM and turn off at 8:00. I am thinking I might have the lights on a little too long overall? Or are most people having them running for 14 hours or so?

I spoke with Ron and several other people about some of these same questions. I am by no means an expert, but you asked what others are doing so I will tell you what I am doing.

My corals are 95% low-moderate light corals. So I started with ~200 Par at the surface and ~100 Par on the sand. I stuck the Seneye in the tank and adjusted the knobs until I reached those numbers. In the end (IMHO) it's not about what percentage of the light you have the knob turned to, it's about what the PAR output is.

Shooting for those numbers I wound up at about 40% on the blues, and then I turned the whites on. Literally, just "on". I nudged them up just enough that the tank didn't look washed out blue to my eyes, and I left it like that for a week.

Yesterday I bumped the blues up another few percent, and the whites are somewhere around 10-15%. From here I will simply observe the corals and continue to adjust up slowly until a change in their behavior or appearance indicates I have exceeded the sweet spot. When that happens I will turn them down a little and leave it.

The only reason I am turning them up at all is that I am trying to increase growth rates a bit. But as far as health and appearance, my corals are doing fine at the lower levels.

Obviously this will depend entirely on what corals you have and how much light they need.

 

[Heuristic]

I know one of the local fish stores will rent out a PAR meter, I think I will really just have to swing by and rent it at this point to figure out what I am really looking at. I have a feeling with these things even from box to box 50% doesn't always equal the same 50% as even the box sitting right next to it .

 

[Ron Reefman]

Do some research about just what kind of PAR you need for the corals you have or intend to have.

The blue light really doesn't have much affect at growing algae. In fact rather than going dark for 3 days to help with a minor algae issue, I went all blue for a week. The coral still polyped out and looked happy, but the algae went away!

 

[Heuristic]

Good to know, so it's really limiting the whites is all I should really care about?

 

[homer1475]

The blue light really doesn't have much affect at growing algae. In fact rather than going dark for 3 days to help with a minor algae issue, I went all blue for a week. The coral still polyped out and looked happy, but the algae went away!

I found the same thing Ron!

As far as my black boxes, I run 2 300W over my 80 cube(0 shadowing) 32x24x24 and actually have to turn them way down or I bleach out my corals.

I run my program on my apex and with that setup I can not go any lower then 20% or it's off. With that being said I do nightlights(2 blue LEDS I added on) on at 6am, first light(back light) I have come at 7am then ramp up to 40% blue and 25% white. My second light comes on an hour later with the same ramp up time. I max them both out at 40% blue 25% white/colors max for 12 hour total. My ramp up/down looks like a nice curve with max light for 3 hours total. Similar to the sun where it comes up most of the morning, is at it's highest for a couple hours, then slowly starts going down.

Although I've had these for over a year now I'm experimenting with %'s and am finding for me and having 2 300W units I'm getting much better PE and coloration with less light. My duncan that has been growing heads but was mostly real light green, has now become a real deep neon green with less light(obviously I'm not bleaching it anymore).

I will admit, other then a couple plating monti caps, I have no SPS.

 

[Elricsfate]

Lighting has to be one of the more contentious, and confusing topics. I have been thinking about purchasing a Kessil AP700 for my tank. But I am not entirely sure if that is simply due to my impression that it is "higher quality" and therefore "better". I have held off pulling the trigger on that because of that uncertainty. I definitely don't want to spend 7-800 bucks for absolutely no improvement...and I can't say there is anything "wrong" with the black box lights I am currently using.

Interestingly, I have 2 120 watt lights over a 75 and things seem to be doing just fine with about the same settings as the 2 300w lights described above. This is part of the confusion. How freakin much light do we actually *need*, as opposed to what we perceive to be needed?

 

[Ron Reefman]

Although I've had these for over a year now I'm experimenting with %'s and am finding for me and having 2 300W units I'm getting much better PE and coloration with less light. My duncan that has been growing heads but was mostly real light green, has now become a real deep neon green with less light(obviously I'm not bleaching it anymore).

Interesting you should say that. I have been looking to add a t5 and even an led strip to the front and back of my Reef Breeders V2 for more light over my main 125g display tank. But at the same time, over my shallow local reef I'm testing a new fixture that's not ready for release yet and it currently has lower PAR than I would like.

I've been running it anyway to see that everything works and play with the very serious control software. Well, I have a few good size colonies of coral that I don't want in my main display tank and that if I can't sell as colonies, I'll eventually frag. But all 3 are doing quite well under about half as much light as I felt was needed! The leather has polyp extension like I've never seen before. It was doing OK under a 300w 32" black box, but now it's looking amazing.

I hope that in the next day or two I will have another new fixture that is just about ready to go retail. It's a high power pendant that I want to use over my frag tank. I currently have an old OceanRevive that is losing PAR after 3 + years and I like the pendant as it will give me more color control and more room to work in the tank.

 

[Ron Reefman]

Good to know, so it's really limiting the whites is all I should really care about?

Yes and no.

IMHO, if you have an led that has 2 channels, most people run 2 or even 3 times as much blue as white. I think that's a sensable thing to do as the zooxanthellae in the coral use blue light for photosynthesis which helps feed the coral. But that doesn't mean that you can run 100% blue without causing problems. Some fixtures you can and some fixtures you can't, and the tank it's over and the kinds of corals all make a difference.

The blue light does not look as bright to our eyes as the white light does. But that's to our eyes. Coral polyps don't have eyes and to them (and a good PAR meter) the blue light can be just as intense and do just as much damage as the white light.

The other point is that you may impact the color (pigment production) of your coral if you limit the white too much. Corals produce colors for very similar reasons to why we do. Go out in the intense sun and we turn tan or red because our body is trying to protect us from UV light. Corals produce colors to protect themselves from various colors of light that could damage them or the zooxanthellae that live inside them.

 

[Ron Reefman]

Lighting has to be one of the more contentious, and confusing topics. I have been thinking about purchasing a Kessil AP700 for my tank. But I am not entirely sure if that is simply due to my impression that it is "higher quality" and therefore "better". I have held off pulling the trigger on that because of that uncertainty. I definitely don't want to spend 7-800 bucks for absolutely no improvement...and I can't say there is anything "wrong" with the black box lights I am currently using.

Interestingly, I have 2 120 watt lights over a 75 and things seem to be doing just fine with about the same settings as the 2 300w lights described above. This is part of the confusion. How freakin much light do we actually *need*, as opposed to what we perceive to be needed?

It's just my opinion, but I'd say the Kessil may be a slightlybetter made (i.e. better construction) fixture than a black box. But I also believe that the light that a Kessil produces isn't any better than the light the black box produces. It's just light. Oh, better mad leds may be better quality, but how is the actual light a Cree led makes any better than the light a Bridgelux led produces? 460nm blue is 460nm blue no mater how you make it.

The advantages to some higher priced fixtures is that they offer more features for us humans to play with, not that they make better light for the tank. You want built-in timers, sunrise/sunset control, 6 channel color control, remote control, Apex compatibility, wifi capability... pay more for your fixture and you can get it. But do any of those features make for better light for the coral? I'll say yes it can, but that improvement is only there if you really understand what your corals need. And even then, it's such a minor improvement that IMHO it's insignificant. 460nm light is 460nm light whether it comes from a $100 Chinese black box or an $800 Eco Tech Radion.

 

[Heuristic]

I found the same thing Ron!

As far as my black boxes, I run 2 300W over my 80 cube(0 shadowing) 32x24x24 and actually have to turn them way down or I bleach out my corals.

So I'm wondering if this is happening to me some. I have been running them at 60% blue, 20% white for some time now. I notice that my GSP's just weren't opening. They were at the top of the tank and with medium flow. I kept testing the water parameters wondering what is wrong with them. I then took them from the top of the tank to the sand bed floor and that next morning they were back open again.

That said, my green birds nest is pretty high in the tank as well and it is doing just fine with good polyp extension. My hammer is towards the bottom of the tank so I can't really judge with that.

Lighting has to be one of the more contentious, and confusing topics. I have been thinking about purchasing a Kessil AP700 for my tank. But I am not entirely sure if that is simply due to my impression that it is "higher quality" and therefore "better". I have held off pulling the trigger on that because of that uncertainty. I definitely don't want to spend 7-800 bucks for absolutely no improvement...and I can't say there is anything "wrong" with the black box lights I am currently using.

Interestingly, I have 2 120 watt lights over a 75 and things seem to be doing just fine with about the same settings as the 2 300w lights described above. This is part of the confusion. How freakin much light do we actually *need*, as opposed to what we perceive to be needed?

I agree, but it seems like the real answer to this problem is getting a PAR meter and adjusting everything to get the numbers you want to the areas of the tank you want. Seems like I need to take my LFS offer on borrowing their PAR meter so I can get some baseline numbers. These things may be too intense as is.

 

[Ron Reefman]

How deep is your tank? How far off the water is the fixture. What corals are having a hard time and where are they in terms of depth in the tank?

Also, if you use a PAR meter, be sure you know the error rate for reading blue vs other colors. Example: My Apogee meter reads 460nm blue at about 10% low and 410nm violet at 50% low. You are running your blues at 100% so that error rate is important.