Custom LED lighting advice. Input please?

[Coasting]

Okay what do you guys think of this?
What would you change? add? remove? instead of?
Move UV on number 3, and more dark blue on number 1? or leave as is.
the 4th one is still getting me. Not sure what I want.

[mike31154]

Originally Posted by Coasting

Okay what do you guys think of this?
What would you change? add? remove? instead of?
Move UV on number 3, and more dark blue on number 1? or leave as is.
the 4th one is still getting me. Not sure what I want.

Are you sure you're not somewhat overthinking the whole process? Could take hours of study & research if you take it to this level & we don't know for sure what you're trying to keep under your lights with regard to livestock. Have you considered some of the multichip options such as Kessil, which has already come up here? They've already done the research & come up with a blend of colours that suits most applications. Custom is great provided there is an easy way to change colours out if you find you've made the wrong choice for your needs. If you like the Listerine blue look, then go for more blues, based on the ratio you have on your existing fixture. Some folks love to have many controllable channels, but in the end it adds needless complexity & I wager most of them end up setting & forgetting at some point. Don't forget to consider your livestock in this decision too though, although it sounds as if your current fixture has done the job on the previous tank.

[Coasting]

Oh I know I'm totally overthinking it.
I really do like what I currently have. However more colour POP would be nice (not sure how to obtain that)
So in my mind I guess im having difficulties replicating what I have on my Nova fixture, into this other fixture.

I tried to do research... and everything is so ... EVERYWHERE!
Don't use colours! BLUE AND WHITE ONLY
or
Use colours! It enhances your corals colours.

I am mostly LPS, with a few simple SPS. I have no intentions of dosing or doing anything complicated at this point.

I frequently played with the 2 channels on my Nova fixtures.

I think the shimmer from the kessils would make me nauseous.

Plus I think this is still a better bang for my buck. I will get full coverage of my tank and im paying well under $1000 for lights. Kessil... Ha, I think id need another job...

[mike31154]

For the POP you wish to have, something in the royal blue & UV spectrum will do the trick.

[daplatapus]

After over a year researching what I was going to do with my DIY fixture here's what I came up with that anyone thinking of doing something like this needs to keep in mind:

1) Corals typically grow under natural sunlight which has an extremely vast range of light wavelength - the range of those wavelengths gets shorter and shorter the deeper you go.

2) I believe, that the light we create needs to re-create that spectrum as close as possible to achieve as natural as possible coral growth.

3) LED's light spectrum's are incredibly narrow. So the more variety you have the closer our light fixtures reach natural light. I personally have issues with fixtures that only have Royal Blue and Cool White LED's. Sure they will grow stuff, and sure they look ok to the human eye. But I sincerely believe that they lack 90% of the spectrum (or more). And we really have no idea exactly what parts of the spectrum every symbiotic algae needs in the corals, clams and other creatures that may live in our tanks. It is my personal opinion that is why MH lights work so well over 99% of LED fixtures. They provide the entire light spectrum while every single LED fixture produced, does not.

4) You can cut out certain wavelengths (and this may indeed be desirable in some cases) as some wavelengths do seem to grow undesirable algae's better than others.

The whole subject is difficult to grasp and is not fully understood by even the leading scientists. But it only seems logical that we need to recreate as close as possible natural conditions within our personal constraints of fixture size, budget etc.

And, yes, I know that my ramblings may not be entirely helpful, lol

[Coasting]

See that's why I figured adding reds and greens and warm whites makes sense.... Not all the corals we have are from 100ft or deeper.... tons of reefs are within 1-2 feet of the surface. So if the reds get filtered out by the water, then the water in my tank would help filter them out.

I really do like LEDs... Every overpriced name brand fixture is slightly different. So whos to say which one is correct?
MH would probably cook us to death in the summer.

[ReefMaverick]

How about a DIY project using Radion Puck...there is a good post on Reef Central on how to do this...