Success with LED and SPS

[daplatapus]

Originally Posted by Ryan-b

They definitely grow corals here are a couple shots of my tank on a diy led fixture


The growth has been good, I will be switching over to mh/t5 just after Christmas. I feel like I'm lacking some color that the Diy leds aren't able to provide.

What specific colours LED's have you got on your fixture? How many?

[Ryan-b]

I built it about a year ago with 72 3w Cree RB, 24 cw, and 24 high noons. It's a little late to add some of the new LEDs that have came out unless I want to redo it all.

[mrhasan]

Originally Posted by Ryan-b

I built it about a year ago with 72 3w Cree RB, 24 cw, and 24 high noons. It's a little late to add some of the new LEDs that have came out unless I want to redo it all.

CW flushes out a lot of green and blues. Red looks better but thats all for CW. That's why people started using nutral white (4500k-6000k). 2:1 RB:NW gives 14K look, something for which people moves to MH I guess.

For full spectrum, it should be 5:2:2:1 RB:NW:TV:RGB for full spectrum. True violet (405nm) actually pops up a lot of colors that RB:NW cannot and it triggers a specific region of photosynthesis too. UV (390nm) on the other hand, is actually bad, possibly because the wavelength gets shorter in water from the source.

[Madreefer]

Originally Posted by mrhasan

CW flushes out a lot of green and blues. Red looks better but thats all for CW. That's why people started using nutral white (4500k-6000k). 2:1 RB:NW gives 14K look, something for which people moves to MH I guess.

For full spectrum, it should be 5:2:2:1 RB:NW:TV:RGB for full spectrum. True violet (405nm) actually pops up a lot of colors that RB:NW cannot and it triggers a specific region of photosynthesis too. UV (390nm) on the other hand, is actually bad, possibly because the wavelength gets shorter in water from the source.

And this is coming from your experience with LEDs?

[mrhasan]

Originally Posted by Madreefer

And this is coming from your experience with LEDs?

Nope. Researches from nano-reef led full spectrum thread

And this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDCRxwQj3t4

[Tangled Knot]

I've been running a Vertex Illumina for over a year now. Also added UV modules a few months ago with little change. Greens, purples fluores more with the UV's but I don't think they're anywhere near the UV in a MH. My SPS growth and polyp extension is great but the color is just not as good as as MH, not bad but just not the same. Sorry people, MH has better color. Question is, Is it worth the heat, evap and bulbs? I'm sticking with LED for all these reasons. My theory is LED is lacking UV. You don’t get that sunburn feeling under LED like you do from MH. On another note keep your LED whites low. They can really screw things up.

Here is a picture of my tank, sorry for the crapy photo. Colors are better then this.


Here

[Madreefer]

I agree with you. You cant get the same results as you can with MH. Theres just that one thing that seems to be missing in everyones tank. Could be color from one coral to the next, browning, bleaching etc. On another note when I played around with my MHs or T5s it never really affected my corals. In Sept I decided to turn my Sols intensity down from 100% to 80% it was a bad move. Brown corals and slow growth. I have since turned them back up and corals are now starting to color up and grow again. I do like LEDs and will not be switching back but man have they been a pain in the a$$

[mike31154]

Originally Posted by mrhasan

UV (390nm) on the other hand, is actually bad, possibly because the wavelength gets shorter in water from the source.

Would you be so kind as to give a quick summary as to why this is so, 390nm falling in the UVA spectrum? I don't wish to watch a 20 minute video about full spectrum just to find out about the bad UV. A quick search on the UV spectrum seems to indicate that anything above 400nm isn't really UV, but simply a violet. So what's so harmful to coral @ 390nm? Thanx!

[mrhasan]

Originally Posted by mike31154

Would you be so kind as to give a quick summary as to why this is so, 390nm falling in the UVA spectrum? I don't wish to watch a 20 minute video about full spectrum just to find out about the bad UV. A quick search on the UV spectrum seems to indicate that anything above 400nm isn't really UV, but simply a violet. So what's so harmful to coral @ 390nm? Thanx!

Sure I will try my best to explain it

So here's the photosynthesis wavelength figure:



The main purpose of full spectrum is to hit the spikes in the graph. So as you can see, the two spikes occurs at 410nm and 428nm.

Now from sun, 390nm hits the water but since ocean have much more depth and much more volume of water, 390nm doesn't actually get in water since the wavelength increases when UV gets into water. Possibly the corals get something 410nm to 428nm (will have to do calculations but I don't know the formulas; forgot optics a long time ago :P) On the other hand, our tank is not that deep, its more clear and so on. Hence using actual UV a.k.a 390nm would actually give more or less that wavelength to the corals and according to claims (I am not sure though), they can be damaging to the coral. Hence, for example, LGB suggests using 405nm which, I am guessing, will get inside out tank at that wavelengths. Anything above 400nm will look purple but will also be very dim since our eyes cannot catch those wavelengths properly.

That's my understanding. I am not saying is 100% right since its more like learning from others and compiling my own logic to support them.

[Madreefer]

Wow Hasan you sure turned in to an expert from a guy that was posting every low dollar light you could find on Ebay and stating "how frickin awesome" they are. When you finally decide on one of your awesome lights and actually have some experience running them than maybe i'll pay attention to what you read on the net. Until such time i'll just listen to those who actually have used LEDs.