Work Nano LED Trials (1 Viewer)

[incysor]

My understanding is that LEDs do not put out the correct wavelenght of light for use by corals.

I've read that there are a few companies that have come up with LEDs that would work for this, but that they are still very expensive/rare.

What kind of LEDs did you use, and what's they're PAR value?

B

 

[Niko5]

Not sure of the PAR but they are 20,000 MCD and they seem to be the right wavelength for coral... ofcourse its only been a week or so. All of the corals in the tank are opening every day and I have seen some coraline algae spots appear on the sides since I put the light on.

 

[incysor]

Well, that sounds encouraging.

B

 

[Guest]

what was the density of LED's that you used? is it too bright/dim?

 

[Trey]

Hello All,

We used 134 White LED's to cover an 8" by 8" area. We need to position some of the LED's differently in future units to better cover the tank with light. For you folks that asked about the electrical schematic, I don't have one drawn up, but functionally, we used a combination of LED's and properly sized resistors all in parallel.

I had planned to use a zener diode in combination with a resistor to regulate the voltage drop to 3.3 V (the LED's specified forward voltage), but I didn't find the proper sized zener in time.

We used three 2A 6VDC power supplies to drive the lights. The are arranged in banks so that you can simulate a day cycle better. In the future, we will likely use single boards which will contain a number of white light banks and a moonlight bank of LED's as well.

As for PAR and wavelength. I am currently trying to develop a contact to help us test both aspects of the system. Will it happen? I don't know. If we get the information, we will certainly communicate it. For now, the proof is in the nano. The corals seem happy and the color appears to be slightly blue of white. It seems to be in the right ball park.

Later,
Trey

 

[Guest]

Any update on this?