That's some serious light. I'm just using the 3 watts and trying not to bleach stuff. How big, deep is your tank? BTW, what's the wavelength on the blues?
Its a 180gallon and it is 24" deep the blues peak wave length is 467 to 470 (nm). I had bought some lens reflectors/collimators but when i used them the light was to intens so i'm not useing them. I will try to post some pics but i'm haveing some problems posting them. Every time i try to post pics it says your submission could not be processed becouse a security token was missing what ever that is?
Last edited by motorcityreefs; 03-23-2011 at 02:00 PM.
Just use photobucket or something like that for uploading images. It's a bit easier.
That wavelength of blue is what they call Cool Blue or just Blue. It'll give your tank a listerine feel (not what you are going for). The blues you want should be in the 450-460 range. They are called Royal Blue. It's good to use cool blue too, but on a much lower level. Also, at 6500K, your white LEDs are going to have an overlap in the blue part of the spectrum. This will leave you tank looking kind of icey. I perfer the "neutral white' range of of about 4300k. By itself the whites are very yellow. So, you need to balance them out with about twice as many royal blues, but they bring out the warmer colors (reds, yellows, etc.) of your corals much better.
My setup is very small compared to what you're doing, but I think the ratios are good. My LEDs are 2 Neutral Whites, 4 Royal Blues, and 1 Cool Blue. I have 1000mA drivers on the NW's and RB's, and a 500mA driver on the Cool Blue. They are all at about the same levels and the color is comparable to to crisp 14-20K MH. I also have every channel on dimmers. So, I can dial in whatever color I want. In a larger setup, you could probably get away with less Cool Blue. Perhaps NW:RB:CB = 3:6:1.
Last edited by Mr. Microscope; 03-23-2011 at 02:09 PM.