Picking out LED lights for growth? for color? for effects? (1 Viewer)

[KyleH]

Does anyone have any personal experience on which of the led lights or combination works best for growth and brings out more color? I see articles saying that 10,000k is the best for growth, but adding UV can help change or color up some corals.

Of course, the blue lights makes them pop, glow, or alters their color from red to orange, from brown to yellow, red to pink, etc. How does royal blue compare to regular?

But then, there are some special effect or purposes. For instance, red seems to be invisible to critters, so you can spy on them in your tank. On the other hand, I had a small yellow and green led which seems to be useless for anything.

So..I guess there may be a couple questions: (1) which LED colors can help with growth? (2) which LED colors provide great color effects? (3) are there any special use LED like red that may not necessary affect growth or color, but allows special features like red--where you can view your tank with inhabitants thinking it is dark?

-KyleH

 

[gabe_j]

you don't want alot of b in ratio to rb you should keep them to a minimum. standard blue is a good color to have for rendition but you don't want to windex your tank either. UV really needs to stop being called UV its violet, we aren't dumping any light under 400nm in the tank. aside from the fact that real UV leds are like $35. no one likes a sun burn lol. however, 410-430nm true violet leds are great for keeping the low nm spectrum up and they make great additions to the system. keep inmind that you wont' see a big difference in the light output but your coral will. red is a good blending color as it gives you a good peak in the photosynthetic spectrum especially 660nm. you really should you all colors its just a balancing game. if you want i can design a lay out for you to follow since i know you like to build things. and keep the charge to a minimum.

 

[KyleH]

gabe, sounds good. We can probably chat during the lighting workshop.

I was just noticing that under white 10,000k, a coral can look reddish, but if you switch over to a blue, it has a different color (maybe pink, yellow, or orange). I haven't seen RB and some of the newer colors lately, so I wasn't sure if the RB gives it a different color than the blue (I suspect, yes).

I was going to play with the dimmer controls to see if you can make a single piece of coral look, red, orange, or yellow, and maybe put it on a transitional timer to change colors every 5 minutes. Call it the "hollywood" effect when its "showtime", ha! Of course, this would just be times when you want to show off your lights with a press of a button, for the rest of the "dull" day, you want to maximize growth.

Also, is anyone with a dimming feature just dimming their blue lights to mimc moon lights? or do peopel usually install moonlight led's separately?

-KyleH

 

[ModAquatics]

When I want a moonlight effect I dim the RB to 3% duty cycle. But I think it is more realistic to dim the whites as well. I just like the look of the dimmed RB better.

The colors that you see under RB that appear different under white light is a phenomenon called fluorescence. The coral fluorescence comes from proteins that emit a specific color when they are excited by specific wavelengths of light of a different color. I am not aware of any corals that have multiple emission proteins but they may exist. I have done a lot of testing with different LED colors and RB is the most prominent fluorescence producer that I have seen. But emission proteins are mostly excited from the 400-500nm range. Other colors do enhance coral color refection so there is benefit there as well. I like to have all of the colors in a fixture that I can but the best growth results in my experience are a mixture of Royal Blue, Blue, Green, Cyan and of course White. Again, this is my experience.....your mileage may vary.

 

[ModAquatics]

UV really needs to stop being called UV its violet, we aren't dumping any light under 400nm in the tank. aside from the fact that real UV leds are like $35.

Yeah, I don't know why folks still call it UV. I think we should buy one of those LEDs, then we can whiten our teeth.

 

[inigomontoya]

Also, is anyone with a dimming feature just dimming their blue lights to mimc moon lights? or do peopel usually install moonlight led's separately?

-KyleH

As Robert, mentioned you can dim the RB's by themselves for moonlights which is what I do. My RB, by themselves are dimmed to 1% on the arduino for several hours each night as a moonlight effect. It is dim enough for all the night critters to come out and play and still be able to see them.