Yes!!!!!!!!! SPS Success with Leds! Come in and Share your Story!

[foundnemo11]

I've never had metal halides.. but from upgrading from t5 lights to reef breeders photon 48 my tank is doing a million times better. Sps is growing fast and I actually had a lobo that looked bleached to death ( I almost threw it away) come back to life and is doing awesome. It literally came back from the dead

 

[hart24601]

I,d imagine shadowing is even worse with radion and such led units where the LEDs are close together. IMO the best way to overcome shadowing is to not use optics and spread the LEDs out over the surfice as much as possible.
Your better off using multiple units run at lower intensity rather than one or two at high intensity.
If you have a 4" tank and running a 32" reef reeder on it your going to get shadowing and a lot of low light areas all around the edge. Your better off having 3 or 4 18" reef breeders mounted sideways.

I think you nailed it. Hopefully LED manufactures will start shining the LEDs into reflectors instead of straight into tank, there are LED headlights that do that - think the light at the dentist (or at least what my dentist use). I think LEDs overseas are in the camp of lower intensity per LED, but coverage across the entire surface like GHL.

 

[bebereef]

I've never had metal halides.. but from upgrading from t5 lights to reef breeders photon 48 my tank is doing a million times better. Sps is growing fast and I actually had a lobo that looked bleached to death ( I almost threw it away) come back to life and is doing awesome. It literally came back from the dead

Can you tell us about your photo period and how high from the water line your leds are?
Thanks!

 

[foundnemo11]

Can you tell us about your photo period and how high from the water line your leds are?
Thanks!

I run them from 7-10 ramping up lunar lights then 10-10. I have the lights ramp up to mid day then back down for night. Then I have just all blue lights for an hour. Then I'll ramp lunar down for a few hours

I pretty much have blues all the way up for the 12 hours and ramp the white up and down each hour

 

[Moser]

I think you nailed it. Hopefully LED manufactures will start shining the LEDs into reflectors instead of straight into tank, there are LED headlights that do that - think the light at the dentist (or at least what my dentist use). I think LEDs overseas are in the camp of lower intensity per LED, but coverage across the entire surface like GHL.

Triton Lani LED has done this for years....

Mo

 

[trueblackpercula]

Thanks. Since I posted this I got AEFW too so I broke the whole thing down and dipped everything in Bayer. I QT'd all the sps and let the tank go fallow. I've eliminated red bugs and aefw. I got some residual Bayer in my tank and killed off my pod population and had to re-seed. My mandarin got thin but I've restocked the tank will amphipods and copepods and he's gaining some weight.

I'm restarting with sps frags but they all look better than ever and are growing fast. In a few months I'll be on my 4th year with these leds.


FTS 9/6/14

amazing tank is that a GIGAS clam you have there?
Michael

 

[ritter6788]

amazing tank is that a GIGAS clam you have there?
Michael

Thank you. It's actually a stressed Derasa. I actually lost it the other day. I had it about 5 years and grew it from 2". A casualty from the Bayer residue in the tank I believe.

 

[herring_fish]

I have finally read this entire thread and it was well worth it. There were many discussions that were mostly positive and I like that. I have learned a lot!

I am moving to a 180 gallon tank so I was pleased to hear about a lot of success stories but I also heard of some objections as well.

I design for a living so I play around with really crazy ideas, just for fun. I was taught that sometimes inventing can be about quantity and not quality, when it comes to generating ideas. That's because you may come up with a half baked idea that someone else can improve on. After several people go to tweaking a stupid idea, they might come up with a solution to a problem that works. Sometimes you just have to get thing started.

Without hijacking this fine thread, I thought that I would throw around a few ideas that many of you have already thought about. Let's think, just for a moment, about them from 30 thousand feet and not get into the details of brand, efficiency, country of manufacture or even style. Detail can be taken up on other threads.

Would adding a single strip of lights, across the tank, of every single available wave length of LED, help round out the look of higher powered arrays that are often dominated by two to four popular colors?

I heard about LED light being too unidirectional in some cases. With the rapped advances in motion control someone could move the light array for very little work and money. I built a unit back in the 90's like this one with two 250 watt metal halides, facing away from each other, inside of a 6 inch square polycarbonate tube with a fan at one end which prevented it from ever melting down.

Now, you can buy low tech units right off the shelf. Think hydroponics. You could build a sweet little mini-controller based unit like this one that I build for feeding plankton. It could be pretty inexpensive.

I like the idea of the so called dream chip. Supposedly, you can get a good color balance and the pin point chips set may get a better shimmer effect. I don't know about either. On the other hand, they may contribute to a cone of light that is too hot.

Could we put a preliminary reflector directly under the chip and direct the light into a normal reflector that does not have any defuser bumps, like some flood lamps? Thing MIGHT reduce any hot spot under the center of the lamps.

Then has anyone tried using a Fresnel lens instead of normal optics?

Light may be able to be dispersed and then redirected straight down with a wider foot print without completely defusing the light. If a light like that could move across the tank as well"¦..

Now, all of this is just crazy but does it spark anyone else's ideas? "œTag "¦You're it?"

 

[007Bond]

Hit the nail on the head with,..."sometimes inventing can be about quantity and not quality, when it comes to generating ideas. That's because you may come up with a half baked idea that someone else can improve on. After several people go to tweaking a stupid idea, they might come up with a solution to a problem that works. Sometimes you just have to get thing started."
I followed the multi-chip thread from the beginning,...lot of good ideas over the years, one being the Dream Chip. It was a very good thread for idea sharing.
Here is a cool thread where the OP built a pcb for his multi chip. Check it out,...see if you can expand,...oh and don't forget to let us know what you come up with.:lmao:---Rick
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2414567

 

[Greyson]

This is the first time i been keeping sps, and also the first time im using leds and i have to say im surprised at how fast the few pieces i have been growing.

 

[herring_fish]

Thanks 007bond,

I went to the linked thread. I'm not through it yet but before I did that, I read iced98lx"˜s thread that was linked from his post #418 in this thread. A lot was over my head for now but I will be going back as I progress to jot down some good detailed information.

I have a lot to learn about this stuff. I don't quite know where I can deviate from what is clearly working for other users.

Experimenting with corals can be quite costly.

 

[007Bond]

I seen your post on his thread, as I'm subscribed also. Its a bit over my head with the programming. Here is a thread you might like on diy power for leds. Its easy to follow and the guys on it will answer any and all questions.>http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2310459

 

[herring_fish]

Thanks,

That is a long thread. Asking questions is what I will have to do.

Going back to my first post, I want to return to 30 thousand feet with another crazy idea. Perhaps you might think that I am sniffing glue up there. Maybe so but here goes anyway. This idea could be applied to dream chips or just about any other LED design, as long as multiple channels are separated by color.

There have been several studies on solar flashing, glitter line solar shading and other irregular light patterns. I’m talking about short periods of time, not seasonal changes, and cloudy days or even passing clouds like any people model. I’m talking about changes that occur in one second or far less.

Some of them were started to see if there were ways to reduce coral bleaching. At first some scientist thought that the wave action in the sea concentrated light and therefor contributed to the problem. They sprinkled areas of water to make defuse light from the sun without changing the intensity. They found that actually coral growth slowed down.

Around the turn of the previous century (19’s) they started playing with flashing the light source. As that moved up through time, they made strobe lights from a spinning wheel with a hole cut in it. Then they moved on to LED’s.

What some studies showed was that photosynthesis in algae, higher plants as well as corals, grow better with higher intensity light if it is flashed. The total amount of light could be higher if it came in shorter bursts. This included reduce likelihood of coral bleaching. What they found is that photosynthesis needs rest periods to process that light photon, on their way to becoming sugars and other products. That is what is also called photo inhibition but this is in the very short term, even at the rate of digital dimming. The on to off ratio sweet spot was from 10 to 40 percent. 10% off!

It was also observed that one flash …say white, could be followed by other flashes like blue in the same cycle without adverse reaction.

It seems to me that a controller can be made without too much difficulty that could control the flash amplitude, length of flash and the time in the cycle that it gets done. Other channels can be offset from each other as well.

I went to another site and asked if this could be done with a $25 mini-controller as the base and they felt that those feature would be easy to be put into effect.

Could a something like this example below, reduce the time that it takes to acclimate corals and reduce the changes of coral bleaching with LED’s, even a little?

 

[Amatuer21]

Holy sheep s*** that is insane!!!! This has to be the most jam packed sps tank on here lol

 

[007Bond]

Herring,...the last thread I linked you to is where I got the insight to build my 5 channel driver pcb for the Dream Chip. The thread is very understandable even without an electrical engineering degree :lmao: And the first link I posted was on a diy multichip pcb,... its a cool idea and the first diy pcb for led's that I've come across... Now which color led's to use on the board is a whole other debate,...but the two threads together should stimulate some thoughts,...throw in your thoughts on reflectors for leds and wahla... please link us to your new build thread! ---Rick

 

[b7fig]

Stunning

Stunning

Thanks. Since I posted this I got AEFW too so I broke the whole thing down and dipped everything in Bayer. I QT'd all the sps and let the tank go fallow. I've eliminated red bugs and aefw. I got some residual Bayer in my tank and killed off my pod population and had to re-seed. My mandarin got thin but I've restocked the tank will amphipods and copepods and he's gaining some weight.

I'm restarting with sps frags but they all look better than ever and are growing fast. In a few months I'll be on my 4th year with these leds.


FTS 9/6/14 by ritter6788, on Flickr
IMG_7852 by ritter6788, on Flickr
Tyree Bali Tricolor Acro by ritter6788, on Flickr
IMG_7765 by ritter6788, on Flickr
Garf Bonsai by ritter6788, on Flickr
Montipora Capitata by ritter6788, on Flickr
Orange Cap by ritter6788, on Flickr

What a beautiful tank. Love the colors. I just switched to 3 radion g3 and I of course burned my SPS. Raised my lights from 9" to 12" above the tank and lowered my power from 90 to 75 and they seem to be making a come back.

 

[firemountain]

I run 5 Kessil A360we, Just bought another and will be mounting this weekend. I have been having great results, in my 300g DD which is 8 months old. burned a few acros, and had to place and moved some from high to low. These lights are intense.

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Robert...can you share your Kessil light settings and photoperiod.

I have a 65g with 2 360we's that are on the Kessil Controller. Just got my first SPS last month, and it's doing ok. I am just trying to see how high the intensity you are running, and the blue/white percentages. Been bitten by the SPS bug.....and want more, but need to dial in these lights better

 

[TreyK]

I have to disagree with everything you just said.[/QUOTE

Fine, but can you explain how a single point light source (Radion, kessil) can overcome shadowing???

They are basically wide angled spotlights or torches.

Shine a torch on an object at night and everything behind the object will be in shadow. Place two torches some distance apart, but both pointing at the object and the shadow cause by each torch get illuminated by the other. Simple physics! Scale this up to multiple light sources and you virtually remove any shadow.

Thats why T5 tubes give very little shadow. They basically have an infinite number of points of light.

Please don't point a torch or two torches at your wall. you may very well light your house on fire.

 

[foundnemo11]

8 months with reef breeder photon 48. There is definately a lot of growth not seen in the picture also.

 

[ritter6788]

What a beautiful tank. Love the colors. I just switched to 3 radion g3 and I of course burned my SPS. Raised my lights from 9" to 12" above the tank and lowered my power from 90 to 75 and they seem to be making a come back.

Thank you.

My frag tank has a Maxspect Razor over it and I bleached several of my corals even with the 120 degree reflectors instead of the 90 degree optics. After some help with a lux meter I dialed them back a bit and they are working great now.