LED Colors?

[jimsflies]

I noticed my DIY LED fixture I bought a couple years ago has two blue LEDs that are not lighting any more. Hard to say why it is, but I can't complain about a <$10 maintenance cost in a two year period.

So while looking into replacements, I am started thinking about adding a few more LEDs. I'm currently running 8 blues and 8 whites off two Meanwell 60-48D drivers. I believe these should be able to handle 12 LEDs each...and in fact may be on the low range of what they should be driving right now.

So what I am wondering is if I should just add more blues/white or if I would gain anything by adding red, green or violet into the mix?

I'm also not 100% sure, but I think the blues I have are "blue" not "royal blue", which as I understand it royal blue is a better LED for corals?

It might be worthwhile to add, that I tend to like the bluer look and my Apex currently runs the blues at 85%, but the whites only ramp up to 12%. I doubt this is an ideal way to run them...maybe I should go ahead and add a few more blues into the same driver as the whites so I can balance the load better? Or perhaps I would gain by swapping out the old white LEDs with a better binned current model white that would be a cooler white...the ones I have now look pretty yellow to me.

[dputt88]

having small amount of red and violet can be beneficial, green i find to be less important.

[Rabidgoose]

That's quite a few blues I think. I would replace some of those with royal blues and add violets. I am only referencing from the kit I just got. While their is some benefit with violet, red and green it is my understanding that it is mostly aesthetic. You also may need to tune your driver if you're adding LED's. (not sure)

chuck

[jimsflies]

I'm not sure about red. I've been reading some articles and here are some of the things they are saying...

The more red light a lamp generates correlates fairly well with low growth rates.

and here too...

These scientists used natural sunlight and filters to transmit a broad red bandwidth (~600 to 800 nm). (Note: Coral bleaching has also been seen at a narrower red bandwidth produced by an artificial light source - a light-emitting diode (LED)

[Poseidon]

LED tech seems to be changing faster than Michigan weather. I have read that violet and cyan are the way to go now, with royal blue and "neutral white". I'd give a call to a couple different LED DIY shops and see what they have to say.

[pinhigh1886]

Jim I have the AI Vega Color and wish I got just the AI Vega Blue. The Green and Red lights are only on a few pucks and it puts RED/GREEN/PURPLE spots in (2) places in my tank. I turned them down to 5% also because it caused a disco effect in my tank. JMO. I am getting a few Brown patches on my sand bed that goes away at night too. I am running my Blues at 95% and White at 20% because i like the blue look as well. I am playing with the lights to see what is causing the brown bloom during the day. I heard that Red and Green can promote algae growth? Phos and Nitrites at 0 so I am thinking lighting is the cause. I am running the lights in Easy mode and they start at 9:30 AM and go off at 9:00 PM with a 1:45 ramp up and down. I also have 1% Royal Blue all night for moon light. May be just too much light.

[jimsflies]

LED tech seems to be changing faster than Michigan weather. I have read that violet and cyan are the way to go now, with royal blue and "neutral white". I'd give a call to a couple different LED DIY shops and see what they have to say.

I agree the availability and efficiency is changing. I guess the big question is what should we be trying to achieve with our lights? I'm not sure if its worthwhile to have red or not. Below is a graph that shows the absorption spectrum of chlorophyll. This graphs seems to show that red wave lengths are utilized by chlorophyll:



But the concern I have is looking at this chart in comparison to the information presented in the articles I linked to in my previous post seems to be contradictive. There is a big spike near the red spectrum indicating it should be beneficial to have them in a LED array, but the experiments show bleaching with corals exposed to red LEDs.

I'm not sure how they measure the information in the graph above, but there must be something else to consider with corals in the red spectrum. Perhaps corals can't handle the red spectrum as well being that it is one of the colors that are absorbed in the first few meters below the water surface.

Jim I have the AI Vega Color and wish I got just the AI Vega Blue. The Green and Red lights are only on a few pucks and it puts RED/GREEN/PURPLE spots in (2) places in my tank. I turned them down to 5% also because it caused a disco effect in my tank. JMO. I am getting a few Brown patches on my sand bed that goes away at night too. I am running my Blues at 95% and White at 20% because i like the blue look as well. I am playing with the lights to see what is causing the brown bloom during the day. I heard that Red and Green can promote algae growth? Phos and Nitrites at 0 so I am thinking lighting is the cause. I am running the lights in Easy mode and they start at 9:30 AM and go off at 9:00 PM with a 1:45 ramp up and down. I also have 1% Royal Blue all night for moon light. May be just too much light.

I am also concerned about the disco effect. I don't have any coral that I want to spotlight with a different color. So blending the colors so it looks good is a primary objective.

Regarding your brown patch issue, I suspect it is diatoms or cyano. Both are photosythetic, it may be possible that they respond differently to different wavelengths of light. I guess it would be interesting to see if it resolves by adjusting color output of your Vega. You'd have to try different scenarios to see if you could narrow it down to a particular light wave length of light.

[Poseidon]

Jim, the studies that I saw regarding red LED's were conducted using exclusively red correct? That is not what the average fixture does.

Oh, I found a REALLY simple solution to help with the disco effect, I placed pieces of "scotch tape" over the reflectors of the red and green, the frosted tape helps to disperse the color over a greater area, reducing the spotlight effect. Eventually manufacturers are going to start putting different optics on these colors, I am surprised it has taken this long.

[pinhigh1886]

Yeah I agree Jim. I have had the Vega now for about two months. I used t5 prior ATI bulbs. No algae at all not one bit. Switched to AI and ramped up over a month for coral acclimation. I wish I was watching the algae at that point but really didn't notice until I was ramped up fully. I turned red completely off tonight. I will let that go for a few days to a week and document change. Then try green. Then reduce intensity and over the next few months see what happens with the brown areas. I am pretty sure it is diatom bloom not cyano. It really does not have any thickness to it. It is just like a thin dis coloring.

I plan on designing my own pucks once AI makes them available. I also only have 2 fixtures and I think I need a third on my standard 90 gallon

[Rabidgoose]

I was advised to use "warm whites" (no optics) instead of green or red.