leds and LPS color changes

[haysanatar]

So if that is the case, adding say some reds, warm white, or other led's in conjunction with the cool white and the blue should help. They also do make uv leds. I'm knees deep in a build myself right now and I'm debating adding a strand with some reds and maybe a few uvs in as well. would red be the color to add or as some one above mentioned would a cyan be better?

 

[victor escobar]

The lack of UV rays being responsible for the color change is something to research. I've been informed leds have not gotten significant UV radiation in them. On the other hand the combination of the missing UV rays plus high PAR (intensity) could be the reason for the lost (death) of red lobophillia and the risks with cynarina (low light corals including oxipora).

I like leds (especially for the low expenditure in the electricity bill) even if they are imperfect but maybe with an addition of certain low price colored leds of low intensity we could overcome the problem.

 

[organism]

OK I accept that the chemistry is linked to the colouring of corals, but the estrange thing is the commonality in different tanks.

There's really not much commonality, in my tank and in a ton of people I know their reds are red under LED's. In mine the reds are RED. Like I said above, it has a ton more to do with your blue to white bulb ratio than anything else. My ratio is 3 blue to every 1 white, in a 1:1 ratio, which I'll put dollars to donuts is the ratio in your fixure, your reds could very well turn orange.

It may not be your lighting. Check your iodine and potassium levels. These are connected to pink and red coloring in corals.

Also very likely.

 

[organism]

OK I accept that the chemistry is linked to the colouring of corals, but the estrange thing is the commonality in different tanks.

There's really not much commonality, in my tank and in a ton of people I know their reds are red under LED's. In mine the reds are RED. Like I said above, it has a ton more to do with your blue to white bulb ratio than anything else. My ratio is 3 blue to every 1 white, in a 1:1 ratio fixture your reds could very well turn orange. It could also be any number of things aside from the lighting, and it can be very coral dependent as well.

It may not be your lighting. Check your iodine and potassium levels. These are connected to pink and red coloring in corals.

Also very likely.

 

[haysanatar]

I don't see how having more blue will give you reder reds...
if the wavelength isn't there to be reflected.. it can't be reflected...
and if its not reflected... than it doesn't look red.

 

[jeremyblu]

I don't see how having more blue will give you reder reds...
if the wavelength isn't there to be reflected.. it can't be reflected...
and if its not reflected... than it doesn't look red.

This theory of yours was null before you even posted it. Read what the op said guys. It was red, then changes color. If there was no red wavelength. It would not have started red then changed to something else.........

Corals change colors specially lps under different lights and intensity. Specially under a change in intensity. I traded for red acan lord a few months ago that was under 400. Watt radiums. After being in my tank of ati And guiseman t5. it sprouted 12 rainbow Aussie babies. That same coral under sol blues looks like it does in mine. And I have seen green acan turn baby blue and red under sols.

 

[Jamesus]

I had the same problem with my Red corals becoming more orange once I changed to LEDs. Every other color in my tank was vibrant and I had great growth but not Reds. after about a year I added a ATI Blue + and a Purple + to my system and it fixed all my color problems.

 

[organism]

I don't see how having more blue will give you reder reds...
if the wavelength isn't there to be reflected.. it can't be reflected...
and if its not reflected... than it doesn't look red.

That's kind of the opposite of what I said: more whites will give you oranger reds, and less whites will give you redder reds. Blue are just there because if there's more of those, there's less whites to bleach the colors. I'll post up some pics when I get a chance of reds in my tank to show the difference

 

[kevlow]

I would like to report on my personal experience w/ this subject. In both the nano section and club forum I shared alittle on what changes my tank went through as I changed the led lights. My little 10g nano first went LED with one ecoxotic 8k/453 blue module, one 403 violet stunner, one blue stunner. My colors were great, LPS growth was very good, but I had little Acro and SPS growth.

At this point, I had LED fever and the more I read the more I believed that more was better.[More Power! -Tim Allen] I stripped out the Eco- LEDs and instaled a DIY 16 3w crees,[8cw and 8 rb] no dimmer and used two blue 403 stunners. At first my colors popped like i always wanted. Then after a couple of months my red acans had changed to orange, my purples in the lobos turned blue but the blues and greens were excellent. Warmer colors were washed out in both LPS and SPS. The growth was better then ever before in SPS but I wanted the color back and better LPS growth.

So I tried a middle ground. I used 6 3w crees [3 rb, 3cw], the 12w twelve led 8k/453 module, one violet stunner, one mixed blue/ white stunner, and two blue 403 stunners. Now I have growth and color. The pinks are popping, the purples have returned and the reds are improving. I have had this mix for several months now

What i have thought about these changes is that both intensity and spectrum played parts. With the 16 3w crees three inches off the water in a 10g tank, I may have been blasting the corals with light. At WWC in Orlando they have incredible corals but it surprized me how little light they hit them with. Now my tank has less powerful leds but more of them with better spread. It has almost the same total amount of watts but spread out with more and smaller emitters.

Also the spectrum is different. I have alot less cw hitting the corals and also the addittion of the violet stunner. The 403 does not visibly penetrate the water more then a inch or two, but I think that the unseen light still hits par and violet color that is low in our visibility range.

Pics are posted in the nano section under "resurrected 10g" about page 5 or 6 now. I do not know how to connect this link. I am happy with the results and I am using this tank to help revive some corals from another tank that did not do well. I know the changes that were made to the lighting. I know the changes I saw in the coral in response to the lighting. I am just trying to understand the science behind it.

kevin

 

[jc-reef]

I would like to report on my personal experience w/ this subject. In both the nano section and club forum I shared alittle on what changes my tank went through as I changed the led lights. My little 10g nano first went LED with one ecoxotic 8k/453 blue module, one 403 violet stunner, one blue stunner. My colors were great, LPS growth was very good, but I had little Acro and SPS growth.

At this point, I had LED fever and the more I read the more I believed that more was better.[More Power! -Tim Allen] I stripped out the Eco- LEDs and instaled a DIY 16 3w crees,[8cw and 8 rb] no dimmer and used two blue 403 stunners. At first my colors popped like i always wanted. Then after a couple of months my red acans had changed to orange, my purples in the lobos turned blue but the blues and greens were excellent. Warmer colors were washed out in both LPS and SPS. The growth was better then ever before in SPS but I wanted the color back and better LPS growth.

So I tried a middle ground. I used 6 3w crees [3 rb, 3cw], the 12w twelve led 8k/453 module, one violet stunner, one mixed blue/ white stunner, and two blue 403 stunners. Now I have growth and color. The pinks are popping, the purples have returned and the reds are improving. I have had this mix for several months now

What i have thought about these changes is that both intensity and spectrum played parts. With the 16 3w crees three inches off the water in a 10g tank, I may have been blasting the corals with light. At WWC in Orlando they have incredible corals but it surprized me how little light they hit them with. Now my tank has less powerful leds but more of them with better spread. It has almost the same total amount of watts but spread out with more and smaller emitters.

Also the spectrum is different. I have alot less cw hitting the corals and also the addittion of the violet stunner. The 403 does not visibly penetrate the water more then a inch or two, but I think that the unseen light still hits par and violet color that is low in our visibility range.

Pics are posted in the nano section under "resurrected 10g" about page 5 or 6 now. I do not know how to connect this link. I am happy with the results and I am using this tank to help revive some corals from another tank that did not do well. I know the changes that were made to the lighting. I know the changes I saw in the coral in response to the lighting. I am just trying to understand the science behind it.

kevin

Interesting. I was in Lake Mary this past weekend at the SRC bi-annual conference and one of the speakers (Anthony Calfo) touched on this exact topic with LED's. He mentioned that one of the issues with LED's is that the wave spectrum peaks are extremely 'spiked' at its particular Kelvin temp instead of a nice 'blunt' curved peak you get with a MH/T5 bulb. He said the range of Nm are very very small and specific with LED's.

His analogy was the LED's peak wave length is like a laser beam trying to hit its target (the zooanthella sp?) and if that 'beam' is not the exact color/temp needed for photosythesis of that particular cluster of zooanthella, then they are screwed. Most corals have several kinds of zooanthella in their skin and require different spectrum for photosythesis... i.e. 420-480. A blue LED may be more like 430-435 (example only)...causing the 'color shift' in your corals or even zooanthella die off (lightening).

It sounds like when you added the different color LED's to your mix, you 'widened' the usable spectrum peaks, thus allowing more zooanthella to photosythesis and keep their original color.

I wish I could find some true Spectrometer graphs that have tested (not marketed) some of the LED's out there.


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[victor escobar]

I would like to thank you all for the responses that I think are very interesting and educational.

In particular the last of jc-reef telling the reasons explained by Calfo in his conference. To say that leads only emit very narrow wavelengths is something that my intuition was telling me as part of the problem. (I still think chemistry +intensity+kind of coral-zooxantelas is also related), but the one million question is how to overcome the problem.

We have heard in the post that some hobbists have added other colors by adding other kinds of leds violet, cyano, blues etc) to the regular white and blue, Excuse me if I am a bit rud but I think they were added in a non very scientific basis that's to say " I put anything following intuition and see what happens".

Some results have been achieved, some of them sufficietly good other only satisfactory and I imagine others insatisfactory. I wonder whether we could find concrete solutions that are in the good direction and put them on a list.

 

[haysanatar]

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?p=17507074#post17507074

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1885076

both of them are led color related the first what corals need the second fully aesthetic

 

[Texsun]

I had the same problem with my Red corals becoming more orange once I changed to LEDs. Every other color in my tank was vibrant and I had great growth but not Reds. after about a year I added a ATI Blue + and a Purple + to my system and it fixed all my color problems.

I experience similar color shifts with my LPS under AI Sol Blues. Couldn't stand it after a few months and am much happier now under T5s. I ran mine at 50% intensity with the RB and Blues slightly higher than whites. I thought that perhaps warmer white LEDs would help and even emailed AI about it but they never responded.

 

[JaneG]

I think your problem might be with the types of LEDs you are using. After reading a lot of topics about this, many people think it might be from UV (hence the use of UV LEDs in some builds), however this has been somewhat disproven. I personally think it's because the "standard" Royal Blue and Cool White LED build provides awful color rendering (and this could also have physical results on the coral colors). This is really obvious if you look at spectral graphs, because the Royal Blue has a really narrow spectrum in the blues alone and the Cool Whites are the same. I would suggest doing a build with Neutral White, Royal Blue and Cool Blue LEDs- I think you'll have a lot better results with your coloration. Also be aware that LEDs have PAR different from other forms of lighting, so it's VERY VERY easy to overdo it- I think this might be a lot of people's problems. Good luck! :beer:

 

[kevlow]

JaneG- +1. It appears that the fixture manufactures are about 2-3 years behind the DIYers.

JC-reef--- I see in your signature you have T5 and LEDs.Have colors improved? Has your experience been as Jamesus has stated.

 

[jc-reef]

JaneG- +1. It appears that the fixture manufactures are about 2-3 years behind the DIYers.

JC-reef--- I see in your signature you have T5 and LEDs.Have colors improved? Has your experience been as Jamesus has stated.

Well, I actually had a 6 bulb (2 fixtures) T5 over my tank from the start. I removed i fixture (2 bulb) and kept my 4 bulb fixture and added 3 Reefbrite LED's strips (2 blues & 1 - 50/50). My colors...especially the florescent colors really popped after the LED's were added. So to your question....my colors did improve...but I believe it is due to the combo where I now get a much wider spectrum of usable light over my corals.

After hearing Calfo's speech on LED's 'narrow' peaks I am ever more convinced that it will take a much larger / more diverse array of LED combinations; not just the typical RB & CW bandwagon that all the manufactures are jumping on now. Until the LED manufactures start increasing a range of colors, I will stick with my combo....or DIY a fixture with several colors. Even the MH users combo with LED's are very nice.

BTW my T5's are
2 - ATI B+
ATI Purple Plus (or Fiji)
KZ New Generation (sweet bulb!)


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[jc-reef]

Taken from redfishsc post:

You can clearly see the 'narrow' peaks of blue.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2017939

Here is the result of the LED testing we did about a week ago, along with a very good friend of mine who is a Marine Biology student at UNC Wilmington. Joe was fortunate enough to just get word that he's been hired by SeCore (yeah!) so these will be the only LEDs I'm able to study unless I happen upon another spectrometer.

The Spectrometer was an OceanOptics S2000.
http://www.oceanoptics.com/Products/s2000.asp

Current was held at 700mA with a benchtop powersupply for all LEDs except the XML graph below.

All LEDs were mounted to 1/2" thick acrylic (Corian) pieces as temporary "heatsinks", and held in place using jigs I constructed to keep things consistent.

For ALL test, the LEDs were 12" from the sensor. The sensor was never moved.

There are too many graphs to post them all here (28 graphs total) and about half of them are more for planted tank owners.

So I will link you to them in the following ways. Several people have offered to host them for us. Two of them are retailers so once they get them uploaded, I'll edit this post and include the link.

Here is my photobucket album with them all.
http://s919.photobucket.com/albums/ad39/re...TING/?start=all


Here are a few of the most important ones, but please by all means look at the rest of them. Some interesting stuff was found. Most of it predictable but nice to know for sure.

Y-Axis is not PAR but a unit of intensity that the meter assigns. We are looking for a way to convert this number into something useful, but it serves as a great comparison.

Rebel Neutral White and 2 Royal Blues

Rebel Neutral White, Royal Blue, Cyan

Cree XPG Neutral White, 2 XPE Royal Blue

XPG Neutral White, XPE Royal, XPE Blue ("cool blue")

XPG Neutral White, XPE Royal, Rebel Cyan

XPG Cool White and XPE Royal Blue

XML Cool White at various drive currents

A few others.

There are others on the album as well, including individual shots for the XPG cool, neutral, and warm white.... royal blue and blue, cyan rebel, XPE red and satistronics red, and various white-only combinations for planted tanks and refugia.

 

[chuckdallas]

Has anyone added a strip of red LEDs on an existing fixture?

 

[haysanatar]

I just ordered the rest of my leds for my fixture and I ordered a few deep reds 660-70 nm 2 per 2 foot section

 

[victor escobar]

It would be interesting to know the real experience with deep reds as there are some controversy related to the usefulness of this spectrum.

I'm really interested because for example humans do not use light for fotosyntesis but will die without light.