Milad's 72in LED build

[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.

[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.

[Milad]

So now the question in my head is, how well would a 660nm Reds work on an algae turf scrubber that is going into the new fish room.....

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by Milad

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

one thing you have to remember as the spectrum goes up the lower the penatration into the water.. so in reality the corals that we get in the hobby (typicly deeper water corals) never see any magenta or green wave length, so adding them to our tanks is pretty much a waist of money.

now where the magenta is good is for terestreal plants, there are several companies out there making LED "grow lights" one of the bigger ones is run out of kelowna or vernon (can't remember what they said) but I was suposed to get togeather with them and work on a tank light. I decided on working on my own as I have a contact with a LED manufacturing company in china (went to high school and am good friends with one of the owners) as of now I am still designing but that might be where it stops with the production of only one proto type. the problem is the patent BS, we can't sell into the US unless I want to pay huge royalties and quite frankly with out the US market I will most likly lose money on the venture. Milade, you are in a perfect spot with your group buy venture as you don't have to worry about that and if ou keep your boards as parts that is awsome also.

the only recomendation I would have is to forget about the magenta and green.. they have been tried and found to be a waist of time, but rather concentrate on the blues and whites.. I am probably going to be ordering a couple of each color from you so I can play with the "look" for my prototype build I am trying to combine TV, RB, and a nutral white or maybe even a warm white, which reminds me.. you don't have a minimum order do you? I am probably looking at 2 of each.

oh and your 4 channel controler, can it run 8 leds? and do you need anything else with it or just plug it into the wall?

Steve

[Milad]

Originally Posted by StirCrazy

one thing you have to remember as the spectrum goes up the lower the penatration into the water.. so in reality the corals that we get in the hobby (typicly deeper water corals) never see any magenta or green wave length, so adding them to our tanks is pretty much a waist of money.

now where the magenta is good is for terestreal plants, there are several companies out there making LED "grow lights" one of the bigger ones is run out of kelowna or vernon (can't remember what they said) but I was suposed to get togeather with them and work on a tank light. I decided on working on my own as I have a contact with a LED manufacturing company in china (went to high school and am good friends with one of the owners) as of now I am still designing but that might be where it stops with the production of only one proto type. the problem is the patent BS, we can't sell into the US unless I want to pay huge royalties and quite frankly with out the US market I will most likly lose money on the venture. Milade, you are in a perfect spot with your group buy venture as you don't have to worry about that and if ou keep your boards as parts that is awsome also.

the only recomendation I would have is to forget about the magenta and green.. they have been tried and found to be a waist of time, but rather concentrate on the blues and whites.. I am probably going to be ordering a couple of each color from you so I can play with the "look" for my prototype build I am trying to combine TV, RB, and a nutral white or maybe even a warm white, which reminds me.. you don't have a minimum order do you? I am probably looking at 2 of each.

oh and your 4 channel controler, can it run 8 leds? and do you need anything else with it or just plug it into the wall?

Steve

Ya I think im in a great position and really what im trying to do is help the community. The website has been running for a year and I havent made a cent off it yet (and let me tell you ive put in so much time into it). Ive just been putting the money back into inventory and contracting people to make new products that people want (DIM4 controller) and trying to streamline the whole process as much as I can for everyone and get the prices lower.

We didnt have min quantities but Im starting to put them in place as of yesterday. Everything is going to be at least in a 6 pack or 12 pack. This is going to allow us to reduce the group buy time to every week. Almost 95% of the orders are above 6 LEDs so its not a big deal I don't think. Im also going to try to get the Canadian shipping lowered somehow.

The controller is really nifty. Its designed to run either 3 LEDs in series (CREE LEDs) or bunch of controllers PER CHANNEL. So that gives you huge potential to mix it up. We have some nano guys running 4 different types of LEDs on each channel and they use them for main lights. We also have the big tank guys running 3 channels of drivers and using the 4th channel for moonlights. So lots of configurations.

[Milad]

So here is a video of the controller:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91Skk...layer_embedded

I will be using this on my build instead of the Apex controller I currently have for couple reasons. I needed something to control the fans and something to control the moonlights. This is going to do both. I also didnt want to spend the extra cash to get the moonlight module and the additional variable speed ports on the APEX.

So I have the heatsink and controller, just waiting on the LEDs to get into production so I can get them in and start wiring things up.