Milad's 72in LED build

[mike31154]

Read up a little more on the Orphek line of products. According to them, they've teamed with marine biologists to produce LEDs specifically designed to provide the spectrum certain corals need and do well under. So the engineering/experimenting appears to have already been done by some highly educated and specialized individuals. Too early to tell whether it's smoke & mirrors but I'm inclined to believe them. Still, no personal experience, but feedback from customers with Orphek products appears to be mostly positive.

[Milad]

Originally Posted by imisky

hey Milad,

In theory 660nm should make the corals grow while 450-460nm (blue and royal blue) makes them color up and I've tested the concept with a custom built PAR 38 bulb, the result were far from pleasing.

The test was done in 1 system, where I had put a custom (5RB, 3CW, 1R) into the sump with adequate flow and movement and only limited the spot for corals to 6x6" with the PAR 38 hung above it at 6" so I'm getting a ton of PAR. The display uses PAR38 with 5RB and 4CW only. Since its the same setup the parameters are the same for the test and what I found was this.

Almost every SPS coral I put under the custom red PAR38 bulb had turned a brown color. There is a bit of color but majority of them lost that shine they had when they were under the none red LED. The test was started since last christmas and it is still going on today since i had a few times where I had gotten busy and the parameters were not optimal. But now that I have stablized the paramaters and my display is coloring up, the corals in the sump under the custom red PAR38 is still the same.

Which leads me to think that corals dont need as much red spectrum as we think they do. Infact from reading a few papers green spectrum seems to do more for corals then reds,and from my experience at 660nm everything just turns brown. Theres no point imo to bring in magenta colored multidie LED when in the end it'll turn all the SPS brown. Even if i was to cover up the red LED in that PAR38 bulb the result of the colors dont come back instantly, chances are they wont come back for a good 2-3weeks.

Thats good too know. Ill keep it in mind when im doing the testing. Im going to be testing several different versions of intensity of the 660nm mixed with the 45nm. Its supposedly proven by their biologist to work but I want to test it out in person to see if its smoke and mirror or what.

[Milad]

Originally Posted by mike31154

Read up a little more on the Orphek line of products. According to them, they've teamed with marine biologists to produce LEDs specifically designed to provide the spectrum certain corals need and do well under. So the engineering/experimenting appears to have already been done by some highly educated and specialized individuals. Too early to tell whether it's smoke & mirrors but I'm inclined to believe them. Still, no personal experience, but feedback from customers with Orphek products appears to be mostly positive.

Actually the LEDs we are bringing in our designed by the biologist/specialist not me. Their customers are huge industrial grow houses. What do the orphek guys use?

[Milad]

And just to give everyone the idea how im going to test it is that (depending on if the fish room is up when I get the LEDs in) I will have different areas of the tank or even in the fish room covered by the different LEDs to see how much of a difference they make. So same water. Im going to try to have the same flow also as much as possible.

so my 180g will be broken down into 3 sections. 1st Section with even 660nm 455nm. 2nd section with more 660nm than 455nm. 3rd section with basic 14000K look.

[martinmcnally]

I hear a lot of people talking about ratios of 2:1 blue to white and such an I wonder if that is based on fact or hearsay or optimized for color rather than growth.

I can only speak for my own personal experience which is 1:1 Cool White to Royal Blue. I've never seen growth like I am getting right now with 1:1, I maybe have my Cool White turn down just a little to make the corals look nicer.

Although could also be down to getting a new Reef Octopus skimmer haha. Too many variables in Reef keeping to really get the best test results I think. With two identical tanks one can go astray with with just simple small anemones stinging your corals at night and throwing your results completely.

I also think back to the "solid recommendations" various store owners would give for T5s and how they were all completely different haha. I think after changing the bulbs multiple times over the years the only thing changing was how the tank looked and not the actual heath or growth of the coral. Moving to LED was most definitely a very significant change for growth and color but I wonder if you end up getting back into the same argument about the different T5s only now with LEDs. Is changing the color slightly really affecting coral growth or is it just more pleasing on the eye. It would be great to see some solid test results the only problem being by the time you are done the testing those LEDs are obsolete and a new range are on the market.

Cant loose sight of the fact also that light is only one portion of how corals feed, depending on the coral of course. So the perfect LED setup in a tank low in nutrients may not be as good as the wrong setup in a nutrient rich tank.

Martin

[Milad]

Originally Posted by martinmcnally

I hear a lot of people talking about ratios of 2:1 blue to white and such an I wonder if that is based on fact or hearsay or optimized for color rather than growth.

I can only speak for my own personal experience which is 1:1 Cool White to Royal Blue. I've never seen growth like I am getting right now with 1:1, I maybe have my Cool White turn down just a little to make the corals look nicer.

Although could also be down to getting a new Reef Octopus skimmer haha. Too many variables in Reef keeping to really get the best test results I think. With two identical tanks one can go astray with with just simple small anemones stinging your corals at night and throwing your results completely.

I also think back to the "solid recommendations" various store owners would give for T5s and how they were all completely different haha. I think after changing the bulbs multiple times over the years the only thing changing was how the tank looked and not the actual heath or growth of the coral. Moving to LED was most definitely a very significant change for growth and color but I wonder if you end up getting back into the same argument about the different T5s only now with LEDs. Is changing the color slightly really affecting coral growth or is it just more pleasing on the eye. It would be great to see some solid test results the only problem being by the time you are done the testing those LEDs are obsolete and a new range are on the market.

Cant loose sight of the fact also that light is only one portion of how corals feed, depending on the coral of course. So the perfect LED setup in a tank low in nutrients may not be as good as the wrong setup in a nutrient rich tank.

Martin

There is no question from what ive seen that LEDs are a hot damn for growth. The 2:1 people are suggesting is more for aesthetic then anything for growth - I dont think most people would notice a major difference between the two but it does make it cheaper because Royal blues are much cheaper than Neutral Whites. What im trying to do is push the limits on growth and still have the aesthetics piece.

The whole system is modular also so if I start seeing the brownish colors imisky is talking about then I can easily swap out the LEDs.

[ScubaSteve]

Originally Posted by Milad

Thats good too know. Ill keep it in mind when im doing the testing. Im going to be testing several different versions of intensity of the 660nm mixed with the 45nm. Its supposedly proven by their biologist to work but I want to test it out in person to see if its smoke and mirror or what.

660 nm makes the corals grow, yes... but... it does so by promoting the growth of zooxantellae, which in turn the coral feeds on. Unfortunately zooxantellae is brown which makes the corals brown out. It's kind of like giving a plant a ton of nitrogen fertilizer: yes, it grows fast but ends up all long and leggy... You get the effect you were looking for but you lose out elsewhere.

If you break out the physics textbook you can figure out how much red light there actually is at a certain depth where you find the corals. You loose a lot of red quite quickly as you go deeper. We are essentially keeping our corals in tide pools compared to their natural habitat, so to get the best behavior out of them you want to simulate the spectrum of light they experience at the depths they naturally reside rather than giving the zooxanthellae what they want (more red).

If you tell me what corals you are experimenting with, I can take a pretty good stab at which zooxanthellae clades are in your corals; from this I could give you pretty much the exact spectrum that clade absorbs (most importantly the absorption peaks). I'd echo the above comment of trying more green than red.

One thing to bare in mind is that all of this will make them grow better but not necessarily look better. You see the coral based on whatever light is not absorbed by the coral (it's own pigmentation + the zooxanthellae) or the light that is re-emitted through florescence. You need to strike a balance between the coral's health and growth and this left over amount to get the best of both worlds.

[imisky]

Originally Posted by ScubaSteve

660 nm makes the corals grow, yes... but... it does so by promoting the growth of zooxantellae, which in turn the coral feeds on. Unfortunately zooxantellae is brown which makes the corals brown out. It's kind of like giving a plant a ton of nitrogen fertilizer: yes, it grows fast but ends up all long and leggy... You get the effect you were looking for but you lose out elsewhere.

If you break out the physics textbook you can figure out how much red light there actually is at a certain depth where you find the corals. You loose a lot of red quite quickly as you go deeper. We are essentially keeping our corals in tide pools compared to their natural habitat, so to get the best behavior out of them you want to simulate the spectrum of light they experience at the depths they naturally reside rather than giving the zooxanthellae what they want (more red).

If you tell me what corals you are experimenting with, I can take a pretty good stab at which zooxanthellae clades are in your corals; from this I could give you pretty much the exact spectrum that clade absorbs (most importantly the absorption peaks). I'd echo the above comment of trying more green than red.

One thing to bare in mind is that all of this will make them grow better but not necessarily look better. You see the coral based on whatever light is not absorbed by the coral (it's own pigmentation + the zooxanthellae) or the light that is re-emitted through florescence. You need to strike a balance between the coral's health and growth and this left over amount to get the best of both worlds.

It pretty much covers everything for SPS. LPS and softies under the 660nm spectrum does absolutely nothing, they dont lose there color nor do they seem to grow faster.

Ive been testing and playing with PAR38 custom versions for about a year and a half now. What I find is what plants need is NOT what corals, especially SPS needs. Coming from a heavy planted tank before my first sw tank, and reading a ton of hydroponic papers it is evident and tested that blue spectrum make the plants grow short with more nodes of leaves while red makes them shoot upwards with fewer nodes of leaves.

Though corals use the red spectrum it just browns them, from the lighting scheme you described earlier of turning the reds on while you are away and turning them off while you are there definitely wont work 100%. That's just not how corals and there symbiotic algae work. If only that was the case we would all be doing that, the chances are you'll be staring at brown corals even with the reds off.

Ron99 and I have tested with green LEDs a little while we were working on an LED light, and it's quite interesting because the green LED florescent some orange, pink and red corals while the red LED did absolutely nothing in enhancing color.

As for the intensity of the red spectrum, it didnt change the outcome. I couldnt adjust via ramping down the LEDs power, what i did test though was coving up the 1 red emitter 25% at a time, and even at 3/4 covered the corals didnt recover from the brown.

Another thing to keep in mind though milad, the more spectrums you add the more "bands" of color is going to show up in the shimmer. The PAR38 with only RB and CW has white and blue shimmers. The one with the red emitter is tri banded white, blue and red shimmers. and adding in a green made it 4. IMO that makes mixing LEDs a bit weird, since the spectrum is so narrow mixing them + the physics behind refraction of the surface agitation = a tank that looks like a disco ball. haha, its hard to get used to that, as it is hard for some to even get used to the white and blue colored shimmers from RB and CW emitters alone.

[Milad]

Great stuff guys. So what happened when you had the green on for extend amount of time?

[imisky]

Originally Posted by Milad

Great stuff guys. So what happened when you had the green on for extend amount of time?

I've never had the green LEDS on for an extended amount of time due to the sheer fact that it just made the tank look epic weird. Would you like to see green colored tank? Maybe the intensity of the green was too strong at 3w and i never checked with it running at 1w or less, perhaps that would be something to test out. But 3w green is definitely overpowering and should probably be used just enough so you cant see any effect in the overall change in color of the water but still enchance the colors.