*Reef Breeders Photon v2 and T5 installation, testing, and review*

[jason2459]

Good review, what % are you running them at now? Any idea what the par is at your sand bed at 100%?

I have mine starting pretty low like at Channel 3 (royal blue) at 1% and that's it at 9am. Then it ramps up from there peaking at 4pm with what's in the picture in the posts above yours. Then it ramps back down to Chennel 3 (royal blue) at 1% at 11am and all off at midnight.

With even just channel 3 royal blues at 1% the par at the sandbed is 5. At 4pm peak with the t5's going and the percentages listed in that picture par is right around 200 at the sandbed. It's there for about 1 hour.

4pm and 6pm if I remember right was about a PAR of 180. And just keeps ramping up and down from there if that makes sense.

I have not done 100% all channels. I'm kind of scared to do that. lol


At 30% channel 4 white only par was over 100.

 

[jason2459]

Oh and the T5s alone with dual 80watt ATI Coral Plus bulbs I'm getting about 100 par at the sandbed.

Those go on at 12:30pm I think it is and off at 8:30pm.


From midnight to 9am I have an Apex Lunar module with 4 lunar lights strung up. They produce 0 par. But I love seeing things come out and play at night like my urchins, shimp, and a butt load of other critters.

 

[jason2459]

How high do you have them?

Good question, I just had to measure.

T5s are 9" off the water

Back sides of the fixtures are 8.5" off the water
Front sides of the fixture are 10.5" off the water

 

[Ron Reefman]

That's awesome. I'll probably never hit that level.

With 3 times as many leds and t5 to boot, I should hope you never even get close to my levels! :beer:

 

[iced98lx]

Great information here Jason. I'm working to re-light my 180 with LED's and T5's so I enjoy the reading. Did you happen to get PAR measurements in the corner of the tank with just T5's? I'm looking at flipping your strategy a little (LED's down the center, 2x T5's front and back) and wondering if the 5 foot T5's over a six foot tank is going to drop off left/right really bad or be fine due to the spread.

 

[jason2459]

Lets see if this makes any sense

With just the dual 80watt coral plus which are themselves slightly less then 5'

Location : PAR

On the sand
Center of the tank 80
Along Front glass center 59
Along Front glass end corner 29
End of tank along Side glass middle 38

Half way up the tank
Center of tank 100
Center along front glass 60
Along Front glass end corner 25
End of tank along side glass 40

 

[iced98lx]

that makes total sense thank you VERY much for the information, it is very helpful.

 

[jason2459]

RBTAs keep looking better and better every day. But something that I didn't think was having any issues actually look the best I've ever seen them.

My red mushrooms. They seem fuller or something. Not so much a color change.

Par right there was low 80s with no T5s. But I think that's before I went up 2 more %. I have to stop taking par readings. I'm getting overloaded with data. It's been addicting.

I don't plan to increase intensity at all anymore but get my bulb/led spectrum figured out. Then I'll get more par numbers. For now I think I'm good there.

 

[jason2459]

Amazing what a change lighting can make. Everything is really starting to look better.

Cyano is getting cut back

Fiji yellow is starting to look fuller like the mushrooms

Bubble tips are filling out again now that they aren't stretching up and coloring up well

The branching sps and and lps on the sand are still pale

 

[jason2459]

WOW! The 5watt Cree Royal Blues are awesome! I didn't notice this before either because I missed it or my anemones are REALLY starting to color up.

I have never seen my Bubble tips glow like this under blue lights. The Anemones are ready for night time and they do some funny stuff sometimes. Usually though not anywhere as full as during the day and sometimes all puffed up at the base.

This is with 1% Channel 3 Royal Blues only. And it's even more impressive in person!

The selection of LEDs used in the Photon V2s is one of the reasons I went with them over other fixtures in this price range as well. They are basically high end fixture type LEDs. No Epi or Bridgelux LEDs. Epi being slightly better of the two but the Cree, Osram, and Semi in their specific wavelengths are better. From what I've researched at least.

And right now I'm very happy. [emoji4]

 

[Ron Reefman]

The first pic in post #29... is that a toy submarine on the bottom?

 

[jason2459]

The first pic in post #29... is that a toy submarine on the bottom?

Yes, yes it is. It was a Christmas gift from my son so it gets front and center attention.

 

[jason2459]

Relevant question on T5 PAR spread.



Lets see if this makes any sense

With just the dual 80watt coral plus which are themselves slightly less then 5'

Location : PAR

On the sand
Center of the tank 80
Along Front glass center 59
Along Front glass end corner 29
End of tank along Side glass middle 38

Half way up the tank
Center of tank 100
Center along front glass 60
Along Front glass end corner 25
End of tank along side glass 40

[/QUOTE]


I got my ATI Blue+ and True Actinics in and finalized on Blue+ and True Actinic. 2 Blue+ bulbs was to much windex blue for me. The True Actinic seems to tone it down.

The Blue+ actually brought up the PAR a bit. The Coral+ bulbs were only about 2 months old so don't think par would have dropped on them.

On the Sand Par center of tank is 85 and half way up 110.

 

[jason2459]

Played around with the settings and will see how the tank reacts. I ilike the colors. so I'm happy but lets see if everything else is. I'm gong to set the Seneye in the tank and get readings through out the day tomorrow.

One of my favorite time settins right now is amazingly with the white channel mixed with the royal blue channels at 10am and 10pm. The warm white with the deep royal blue is very nice looking. The warm whites help balance the blue+ bulbs too during the hours the T5's are on.

Here's the settings I have logged right now. Ramping up to a peak at 4pm and back down mirroring the previous hours. I'm just shooting from the hip here and seeing what happens. :beer:

Channel 1 Deep Red Osram 3watt 660nm
Channel 2 Green Semi LED 3watt 520nm
Channel 3 Royal Blue Cree XT-E 5watt 450nm
Channel 4 White Cree XP-E 5watt 5500K
Channel 5 Cool Blue Cree XP-E 3watt 480nm
Channel 6 Violet Semi LED 3watt 420nm

Dual Hamilton Aruba Sun V w/ 80watt ATI down the middle
True Actinic + Blue+

Lunar Lights on from 12pm to 9am (separate lunar led modules)

%s Ch1, Ch2, Ch3, Ch4, Ch5, Ch6
9 am 0,0, 2, 0, 0, 0
10am 0,0, 6, 1, 0, 0
11am 0,0,10, 1, 3,10
12pm 1,0,14, 4,10,14 12:30pm T5s on
1 pm 1,1,16, 6,16,16
2 pm 1,1,18, 8,18,18
3 pm 2,2,20,10,20,20
4 pm 2,2,22,12,22,22
5 pm 2,2,20,10,20,20
6 pm 1,1,18, 8,18,18
7 pm 1,1,16, 6,16,16
8 pm 1,0,14, 4,10,14 8:30pm T5s off
9 pm 0,0,10, 1, 3,10
10pm 0,0, 6, 1, 0, 0
11pm 0,0, 2, 0, 0, 0

 

[jason2459]

I have the SWS reporting up but have had some snafus which some of it was some misunderstanding on my part and some quirkiness things and some errors. But the Seneye support has been doing an awesome job in responding to my emails and also pointing out one of the issues which was my lack of actually reading what the instructions said. But I'll get another thread started for the whole Seneye and SWS vs Laptop experience to not distract this one.

Needless to say I still have par readings going up to my seneye.me cloud portal and I have my new 2016 EB832 power bars tracking Watts used. The seneye.me portal gets updates 2 times an hour which is good as I can get a snapshot before and after my T5s get turned on.

Only negative with the seneye.me reporting is it is a snapshot so from my experience so far if something like a fish is over the device at that time the reading will be way down. I'll get to the SWS live portal later but for now I'm finding just the watts used interesting.

 

[iced98lx]

I got my ATI Blue+ and True Actinics in and finalized on Blue+ and True Actinic. 2 Blue+ bulbs was to much windex blue for me. The True Actinic seems to tone it down.

The Blue+ actually brought up the PAR a bit. The Coral+ bulbs were only about 2 months old so don't think par would have dropped on them.

On the Sand Par center of tank is 85 and half way up 110.

Interesting choice on bulbs, I am adding 4 80w T5's to my LED's and had planned on trying out the Aquablue Special as it may not require as much balancing with whites, have you looked at that bulb?

 

[jason2459]

Interesting choice on bulbs, I am adding 4 80w T5's to my LED's and had planned on trying out the Aquablue Special as it may not require as much balancing with whites, have you looked at that bulb?

I have not but from what I understand its close to the coral plus. I still think I may prefer one coral+ bulb in but going to give this combo a chance over the weekend so I can see it through out the day more.


Edit: actually I have but its been so long and it was combined with many other bulbs I don't remember to much about it.

Trying to remember back when I ran T5s I think I ended on a combination of blue+, aquablue special, uvl actinic white, and fiji purple. Coral+ wasn't out.

 

[iced98lx]

Cool, looking forward to your observations.

 

[jason2459]

This whole PAR light measurement thing has been addictive... ha!

Keep waiting for seneye.me to update the readings and hope some fish doesn't shade it. There was one reading where there was most definitely something blocking some light.

You can see the dip when its blocked a lot

Going to do some long term tracking and once I can get access to the SWS I can get PUR and track it to.

 

[jason2459]

1st day of measuring par and watts used with the new settings and bulbs. The Par has some variance as I couldn't get the live readings early but is pretty close but having lots of fish will cause some shading that is not conducive to snapshot readings.

That pretty much shows me T5s are not very efficient lights. lol

But they sure are pretty. As soon as the T5s kick on the watts used jumps over the PAR produced. But as the LEDs were really starting to ramp up the PAR started edging back closer.

Average PAR for the 15 hour period was 112
Average Watts used for that period was 110 watts