Success with LED and SPS

[ScubaSteve]

Originally Posted by Madreefer

So next question. Are the lenses on LEDs equipped with "uv LEDs" have the proper lenses? Same question goes out to the DIY guys. Local guy here in town decided to take the glass out of a fixture to try to get a little more use out of the MH bulbs. Bad idea. All corals fried. So with uv LEDs and not having the proper glass/lens will it be the same result? I would think so

In LED fixtures, "UV LEDs" aren't actually UV, and if they are , they're just in the UV zone. I am using UV LEDs in my PhD work, so I can tell you with confidence that a "UV LED" and a real UV LED are two VERY different beasts. Most of the LEDs used in fixtures aren't at a wavelength to be considered harmful. Also, an unshielded halide bulb puts out MUCH more UV than a few little LEDs. But with enough low power true UV LEDs,you can cause yourself some trouble.

But to answer your question, there is no point in putting a shielding lens on a true UV LED if you are trying to use it as such. LEDs put out fairly narrow spectra, so blocking the UV with a lens really is just blocking all the light.

What we are actually wanting out of all of this is the deep violet which gives a blacklight effect. Going deeper into the UV wavelength actually does not yield more fluorescence, so there really is no point.

[Madreefer]

Well thanks. Very informative. What are you running for lights on your tank? Sorry too lazy to search your posts. And if you dont mind, what are are your percentages of intensity?

[ScubaSteve]

Originally Posted by Madreefer

Well thanks. Very informative. What are you running for lights on your tank? Sorry too lazy to search your posts. And if you dont mind, what are are your percentages of intensity?

I am still running MH on my main tank (250W MH + 4xT5, 100% intensity ) but I am currently wrapping up an LED conversion for my biocube 14 (Full spectrum, 24 LEDs, Cree XT-E's) as an experiment. I'm going to play with the LEDs in the little tank until I figure out what works best and what I like. Once I've got the full spectrum thing figured out I'll probably build an LED fixture for my main tank. I do love my MH though.

At work I am currently building a UV LED reactor as a side project (using the first TRUE high power UV LEDs in the world... sounds kinda weird when I say it out loud, but it's true). For my main research, I use T5s and MHs as light sources to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using only light and semiconductor nanoparticles... soooooo, I kinda spend a lot of time talking about light, UV, LEDs/semiconductor, MH and T5s everyday Kinda nice to be able to talk about it in a non-work context.