DIY LEDs - The write-up

[lpsouth1978]

It all depends on how you want your tank to look. If you want a warmer look then a warmer XR-E and a red. Ive seen great growth with only using the Cool White and Royal Blue. Personally I prefer a more blue or 17K look but mank have used a 6.5K look with good results. If you do go with a large mix of LEDs I would use dimmable drivers or buckpucks so you don't fry your corals.

I agree with the blue or 17k look myself. I am using a 20k hqi on my existing system and love the color it gives. IMO, 6.5K is too yellow, while it produces higher par, I like the color of 14K or 20K better, and have had good growth with both.

AS far as UV to the best of my knowledge SE MH bulbs have a UV shield to prevent UV

I was unaware that the SE MH bulbs had UV sheilds. Do you know if this is the case with DE MH?

Scratch that, after doing some research online, it appears that most MH bulbs whether SE or DE are produced with UV blocking glass. While this is not always the case, chances are the bulbs we buy for our tanks are among those that block UV radiation. I have a UV meter at work that I can use to test the UV output on my existing MH system. I will try and test my DE MH tomorrow to see if it is putting out any signifcant UV. I will let you know what I find.

 

[Obi-dad]

Anyone know what brand the Violet 3 watters are in that photo from the Maxpect thread? And where to get them? I don't see a brand listed there.

 

[swannking]

Anyone know what brand the Violet 3 watters are in that photo from the Maxpect thread? And where to get them? I don't see a brand listed there.

I have 3 Maxspect fixtures that have the violet leds. I don't know the brand. They are not as bright as the blue. I have swapped them out after 2 months of use. If you want them I have 12 of them. This is an actual pic of the led.

 

[laverda]

AS far as UV to the best of my knowledge SE MH bulbs have a UV shield to prevent UV

Bill

The UV shield is the oputer glass on all SE MH bulbs.
On DE bulbs it is part of the fixture.
Without the UV shields, you will kill just about everything in your tank in a few hours.

 

[CJO]

And here a picture of my lamp. I changed 4 Cool Whites for Neutral Whites

How much of a difference did you see?

Thanks,
CJ

 

[The Grim Reefer]

Fact is you only need red, blue and green light to cover everything. I don't have a neutral white to check but I suspect they will have enough green and red spectrum that using red and cyan LED's wouldn't be needed if you use enough of the NW's.

 

[CJO]

Are you sure? Since LEDs have a very defined peaks and coral fluoresce in very defined regions of the spectrum, will combining the LEDs give you a broad enough range to excite all of the colors? If that's true, that would be great.

Thanks,
CJ

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Are you sure? Since LEDs have a very defined peaks and coral fluoresce in very defined regions of the spectrum, will combining the LEDs give you a broad enough range to excite all of the colors? If that's true, that would be great.

Thanks,
CJ

What it boils down to is that there are essentially an infinite number of spectra that can produce a given perception to the human eye. So in that sense, Grim is correct - with red, blue, and green light, you can blend to create just about any humanly perceivable color, save for some weird outliers that we don't need to really be concerned with. In that sense, you could use red, green, and blue LEDs to tweak the source of the light, and hence the light reflected off your livestock, to match any color you wanted.

That said, since the color (and growth) of a coral are linked to biological and chemical factors beyond merely reflected light, it is quite possible that there could be many different luminaries generating the same perceived color that have different results (both appearance and growth) over a reef tank.

The bad news is, no one's really nailed this down yet for LEDs. The good news is, LEDs give us great control - we have several different wide-spectrum LEDs (the whites) and a whole range of "peaky" single color LEDs. As with the case with MH and fluorescent where reefers can pick a given lamp to get the color they want, different reefers can get different results by blending these LEDs.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

To answer your question more specifically - I agree with Grim - the various white LEDs should have enough intensity across a broad enough spectral range that you should be able to mix or choose from them to get the desired result, rather than having to "build from scratch" by mixing narrow spectrum (single color) LEDs.

 

[sammy113]

How much of a difference did you see?

Thanks,
CJ

Not so big difference in color render I see. Hopefully it will do its job with spectrum. Was thinking to maybe add 2 more.

 

[Taqpol]

Well, I finally got around to taking the true color pictures I promised a long time ago. Let me just say, taking nice pictures of a LED driven system is MUCH harder then my previous T5 system. With the T5's I would shoot in the RAW mode on my camera (Canon T1i) and then adjust the white balance in kelvins to 14000 to 18000 to match the lighting in Photoshop. It turns out that for some reason my cameras sensor can not get the kelvin right under LEDs, it can't even get the tint right! In the photoshop RAW editor the auto white balance would set the images around 6500K and a tint of -10 (towards green). After fiddling with all the different settings for an hour before finally trying Photoshop's auto white balance eye dropper I discovered that a Kelvin of ~14000 and a tint of -120 (that is not a typo) matched the colors of my tank almost perfectly!

FTS

GARF Purple Bonsai. This coral almost died off completely in my tank moving fiasco, but I managed to save this tiny piece that completely browned out over two months in my friends QT tank with T5 lights. After being in the LED lit tank for less then a month it has already colored up to this and is improving steadily:

In my last T5 driven tank I had a problem where most of my corals would eventually get some shade of green in them. In this tank I have the opposite effect occurring where my normally all green corals are starting to turn a more yellowish green. Not bad, just different.

However some green corals, like this Pavona have been staying a very nice shade. This particular coral has a different problem though, since the LED lights are so directional there are more shaded areas on this coral then their used to be and shaded areas are turning a tan/green mix.

Speaking of shading, this Sunset Montipora is also affected. This was the hardest coral to get the colors right on but I would say it is close.

Red BTA:

 

[theatrus]

Interesting behavior from the image conversion process... Shows you the difference between human perception and reality for light sources.

 

[kcress]

Taqpol; Thanks for the effort and descriptions. Very very interesting to me.

 

[Reef_Matrix29]

Looks good!

 

[CJO]

Thanks for the info. It's interesting, buy my sunset montipora looks quite a bit different under LEDs than yours.

CJ

 

[kma408]

look so nice. thanks

 

[XSiVE]

Nice job Taqpol; I also found that 14000 Kelvin was close to accurate but I couldnt find the tint / color balance quite right, I will have to try your -120 setting.

 

[Taqpol]

Speaking of shading, this Sunset Montipora is also affected. This was the hardest coral to get the colors right on but I would say it is close.

Thanks for the info. It's interesting, buy my sunset montipora looks quite a bit different under LEDs than yours.

CJ

The Sunset Monti was by far the hardest to photograph, but I think this is primarily due to shading. To my eyes the whole coral looks more like the the bottom, darker part of the photo where the red/orange is darker then at the top left and the polyps are more green instead of yellow/green. Can you post a photo of yours?

Also remember that these corals have only been under these lights for a month and I haven't got the system dialed in perfectly yet.

Nice job Taqpol; I also found that 14000 Kelvin was close to accurate but I couldnt find the tint / color balance quite right, I will have to try your -120 setting.

I would definitely suggest playing with the far reaches of the tint control, but I would also like to point out some of the more subjective aspects of all of this. First of all, my LED system is different then some of the common ones here as I run 12 RB, 10 CW, and 2 NW XR-E's per fixture. Second as I pointed out above my system is fairly new and the corals haven't been under this light for a "long amount of time". Once I get my husbandry dialed in and the corals have been under consistent light for > 6 months I would like to take pictures again and compare.

 

[Dannyrotorpilot]

I am curious as I see some people are using one or two Red LED's. Is the purpose to hit a higher peak in the growth nm range that Cool whites and Blues do not peak? I run 3 DIY 36 LED Pendant in the pic below and am curious as to try to add a couple red LED's if it promotes additional beneficial growth in the aquarium.

 

[Reef_Matrix29]

That and coloration of things that the red might excite