Sam's 7.5g Do!Aqua cube lit by 320 Christmas LED lights

[sam11909]

^ that's what I was thinking. What would be the perfect k value for coral growth?

 

[drauka99]

6.5k is going to give you lots of growth.

10 K is going to look more white and give pretty good growth

14K is going to look a little blue and give decent growth

20k is going to give lower growth but lots of blue

the more blue the more the colors of corals and fish "pop"

these are generalizations

6.5k is pretty close to natural daylight lower K values than that is going to not give you "growth" , 3.1K is def out in my book


I have seen 6.5k LED lights at Lowes and Wal-Mart (i am pretty sure) pretty much you want a "daylight" bulb those are genreally 6.5K

 

[sam11909]

So it would be better to have a 6.5k main light with actinic supplement to bring it to an overall of 20k than having a 20k main light by itself?

 

[drauka99]

yes but its going to be really hard to get the "yellow" out of the 6.5k

I woudl suggest starting with 10k is possible

You could theoretically take one of those 6.5k LED lamps and then add a whole bunch of your blue Christmas lights around it to blue it up.

Edit: this is what I found

http://www.elightbulbs.com/Eiko-05796-LEDP-PAR38-SP-60K-Flood-LED-Light-Bulb

I don't know if it will work. I personally woudl go with the LED bulb from Nanotuners before that one since its been tested

 

[sam11909]

Thanks, I'm also looking into some DIY LEDs.

These look cool, and they're not too expensive http://www.boostled.com/

 

[fote03]

The Boostled were having a presale a couple days ago and were only 59.99!

 

[mudskipper1]

6.5k is going to give you lots of growth.

10 K is going to look more white and give pretty good growth

14K is going to look a little blue and give decent growth

20k is going to give lower growth but lots of blue

the more blue the more the colors of corals and fish "pop"

these are generalizations

6.5k is pretty close to natural daylight lower K values than that is going to not give you "growth" , 3.1K is def out in my book


I have seen 6.5k LED lights at Lowes and Wal-Mart (i am pretty sure) pretty much you want a "daylight" bulb those are genreally 6.5K

This is only partially true. Photosynthesis has two main peaks, one around 670nm, and one around 445nm. So the yellow/red one corresponds more with the 670nm, but the one most LED guys are shooting for primarily is the 445nm one which is far into the deep blue/indigo range. This seems to be much easier to make aesthetically pleasing for the most part. A huge variable is where the specific peaks are in the bulbs output spectrums. Some will have a few narrow peaks, and others have wider spectrum outputs.

This may help:

http://www.bcb.uwc.ac.za/ecotree/photosynthesis/spectrum.htm

I am no expert, so feel free to correct me.

 

[marinerfr]

Thanks, I'm also looking into some DIY LEDs.

These look cool, and they're not too expensive http://www.boostled.com/

sam go with rapidled.com's par 38 you wont b dissapointed i got one and i love it

 

[sam11909]

^It's between that and DIY LEDs. What size tank is the light over?

mudskipper- I thought there was more than one peek. What type of clorophyll do our corals usually have a, b, or both?

Edit: I think I kind of answered it myself. It would be type A, correct?

 

[mudskipper1]

I believe most corals have both, but in the wild, most corals would predominantly absorb in the 430-450nm range, because the longer wavelengths get filtered out very quickly in the ocean as you go down, and the light becomes mostly blue/purple pretty quickly.

 

[sam11909]

So it is actually better to have a deep blue color for coral growth, like 20k, than having something whiter like a 6.5k light. I always thought we added the blue light mostly for aesthetic reasons?

Here's a link to the thread I started for asking questions about DIY LED's. I'm totally lost right now on how to set them up and what to get.

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1909474

 

[mudskipper1]

I am no expert in this area, but as far as I know, the RB do give a lot PAR with LED lighting. This was hard for me to grasp too. If needed, I can try to describe my plans, and understanding.

 

[sam11909]

I think I might understand. The RB are for the 450nm range while the cool white are for the second arch on the graph. Therefore a combination of the 2 gives the best coral growth?

 

[mudskipper1]

more or less...the cool whites have a lot of green spectrum which does our tank zero good. it is an ugly color, and corals can't use it.

 

[sam11909]

So it's better to have more RB like 60/40 or 70/30?

 

[mudskipper1]

It is very much a matter of personal preference as far as color. Most LED DIY systems seem to be fine as far as PAR in most cases, but there is a much bigger variation on color choices. People are starting to experiment with other colors to make their corals "pop" more. Including a small number of red emitters has been suggested, cyan, Neutral white LEDs have been preferred over standard cool whites in most cases, at least as part of the mixture. cool blues have also been interested. But i would say the "standard" might be somewhere in between 50/50 and 70/30 RB/CW. I personally don't love the color of the standard so I am looking at other options, currently leaning toward 3 bigger emitters. two 10 watt 445nm and one 13 watt bridgelux, I believe it is 5600k. I may include a couple other smaller emitters, but that is still up in the air.

Cheers

 

[lusenut2]

Hows the tank looking. Did you put the Christmas LED back on the tank

 

[sam11909]

No, I went ahead and took them off. Added a pistol shrimp and that's it for now until I get my LEDs up. I decided to go with 2 cool whites, 2 neutral whites, 4 royal blues, and 1 cyan all on different dimmers. Should be able to start putting it together by the end of this week.

 

[mudskipper1]

Sounds like a good setup...

 

[Impossible]

I know the lights had low par but did u actually see any negative effects on the coral?