I WANT LEDs to work! sooo....

[korkus]

I have had my reefbreeders lights for 6 months. They are extremely intense and you have to be careful not to bleach your corals from too much light. Running them at 50% are plenty for my 1 acro and montis. Like said above the LEDs that are out today are light years ahead of the ones just 2 years ago.

 

[picoreefguy]

SnowManSnow;870716 wrote: still exploring options... waiting to hear back from some gurus no offense to anyone

well you came to the right place, my nickname as a kid back in india was guru lol. ive done a couple led scratch builds and my best advice is you can never have enough heat sink. heat is the worst enemy of an led and if you dont cool them properly you can cut their life in half or more and their spectrum changes as the heat wears them out. so if you do go the diy route make sure you properly cool your leds

 

[outdrsyguy1]

I'm in the middle of a DIY build with 2 18" reefledlights.com set ups. I've got 66 3w cree LED's in each and 6 drivers per light so I can tune the exact color AND intensity I want. Grabbed an extra VDM for my APEX to handle all the outputs. Just finished testing the first ligh last night. I've got a PAR meter and I'm going to do some testing this weekend with it to see if I need to add the optics or not.

I'll be starting without t5 supplementation and seeing how it goes. My current 2 - 250w metal halides and 2 - 95w pc's provide about 280 par just below the surface and about 100 par in the sand. It's really pretty sad. If you look up sanjay's testing on MH's you'll see that the PAR output difference between different bulbs, reflectors, and ballasts is HUGE. I can't imagine why a similar trend wouldn't hold true with LED's. Heat sinks, binning, level of control, combination of different colored led's....

 

[clay4au]

B,
There is also value in a premium fixture with a warranty and great customer service.
I just purchased an AI Sol Blue and I am in love with this thing. It's totally modular so can be upgraded if/when needed. Also has a wireless control with built in thunderstorms and lunar cycle.

I am also very interested in the kessil cannons. I don't have any experience with them yet but would recommend you check out the a350w and a360w. These are what all the big boys at the swap were using and I've seen them highly rated in several surveys.

Otherwise, I really think its 75% water quality. The rest is knowing the equipment/tank and acclimating the animals to it properly.

 

[skriz]

I've been watching LEDs for years and years now. As someone said earlier in the thread, the LED tech of today is leaps and bounds better than it was last year. HOWEVER, you absolutely will NOT get that tech in the cheap fixtures, or most higher priced fixtures available today. Let's face it, products needs a little time to incorporate the new tech and the cheap chinese stuff will always use the cheap and older tech.

CREE is doing some exciting stuff with LEDs. I'm looking forward to seeing how far they'll push that envelope.

Having said that, one thing that is lacking is UV. That spectrum isn't there yet. You can get close, but close is no cigar! You can supplement with T5's to get you there. BUT, if you're going to do that, you may as well stick with an all T5 setup and just wait until LED can stand alone.

Ofir is doing some interesting things with his fixtures. Time will tell how that pans out, but for larger/deeper tanks, his stuff seems to be the way to go right now.

jmo, of course.

 

[outdrsyguy1]

I don't know if I agree with you about the UV. I put a few UV chips in mine just in case, but here's a spectral plot of the gold standard radium 400w bulb on different ballasts. There VERY little output in the 400 to 420 range and I thought I read somewhere that below 400 is actually the bad kind of UV that can hurt tissue. I'm far from a guru at this stuff though.

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[ripped tide]

The best way to tell if a bulb is putting out UV is to use a UVB meter. Another easy way: if you, or someone you know, wears glasses that use transitional lenses. Transitional lenses will turn dark when in the presence of UV.... I had a buddy with traditional lense stick his glasses under some LEDs- no change. Under a halide? They Turned black.

I am a big t5 fan when it comes to bulb color option. If you have a fixture that uses more than 4 bulbs, you can really play around with color options and come up with some really pretty combos.

 

[picoreefguy]

Ripped Tide;870900 wrote: The best way to tell if a bulb is putting out UV is to use a UVB meter. Another easy way: if you, or someone you know, wears glasses that use transitional lenses. Transitional lenses will turn dark when in the presence of UV.... I had a buddy with traditional lense stick his glasses under some LEDs- no change. Under a halide? They Turned black.

I am a big t5 fan when it comes to bulb color option. If you have a fixture that uses more than 4 bulbs, you can really play around with color options and come up with some really pretty combos.

ill have to try that with the radion pros they have a couple chips in the uv range itll be interesting to see if they live up the the claims

 

[sea atlanta]

outdrsyguy1;870887 wrote: I don't know if I agree with you about the UV. I put a few UV chips in mine just in case, but here's a spectral plot of the gold standard radium 400w bulb on different ballasts. There VERY little output in the 400 to 420 range and I thought I read somewhere that below 400 is actually the bad kind of UV that can hurt tissue. I'm far from a guru at this stuff though.

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I cant get your image to load, but "ultraviolet" is a very broad term for a wavelength. There is useable, valuable UV, and germicidal UV, which falls in different wavelengths. Both UVA and UVB are very important to biological process, and fall between 280 to 400 nm. Below 280 is UVC is germicidal.

As Ripped Tide said, UVB is best tested by a UVB meter. We use one to measure output, and have yet to find a LED fixture that makes measureable UVB.

 

[outdrsyguy1]

I hope we aren't derailing your thread too bad snow, but I was hoping to dive more into this UV thing. The testing I was referring to is found here http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2004/2/aafeature2">http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2004/2/aafeature2</a>
The Radium shows virtually zero UV below 350 nm and from 350 to 400 it ramps up linearly from 1% to 10% when compared to the max power from the 450 spike. I don't understand the chemical/biological processes involved but it seems strange to me that we put this gigantic power sucking lights over our tanks and the 1% to 8% UV from the bulb becomes important. It may output enough uvb to turn your glasses darker but I don't see how the corals care about that range when one of the most successful bulbs emits very little of that region.
I saw a chart somewhere about chlorophyll A and B that's in corals and the specific absorption peaks and I believe the are both between 430 and 460.
It's all so confusing thats for sure. I've found studies that show where too much red spectrum actually damages coral but the chlorophyll a and b also had a couple absorption bumps in the 600 to 650 range.
If anyone has some info on the UV ranges and how it interacts with corals I'd definitely be interested in learning more.

 

[sea atlanta]

outdrsyguy1;870921 wrote: I hope we aren't derailing your thread too bad snow, but I was hoping to dive more into this UV thing. The testing I was referring to is found here http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2004/2/aafeature2">http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2004/2/aafeature2</a>
The Radium shows virtually zero UV below 350 nm and from 350 to 400 it ramps up linearly from 1% to 10% when compared to the max power from the 450 spike. I don't understand the chemical/biological processes involved but it seems strange to me that we put this gigantic power sucking lights over our tanks and the 1% to 8% UV from the bulb becomes important. It may output enough uvb to turn your glasses darker but I don't see how the corals care about that range when one of the most successful bulbs emits very little of that region.
I saw a chart somewhere about chlorophyll A and B that's in corals and the specific absorption peaks and I believe the are both between 430 and 460.
It's all so confusing thats for sure. I've found studies that show where too much red spectrum actually damages coral but the chlorophyll a and b also had a couple absorption bumps in the 600 to 650 range.
If anyone has some info on the UV ranges and how it interacts with corals I'd definitely be interested in learning more.[/QUOTE]

The scale of the graphs is whats messing you up. The axis has the measure as watts/m^2/nm. Whereas a more measureable and functional scale for what were talking about would be microwatts/cm^2. For example, an overcast day makea a little less thatn 100 microwatts/cm^2. That means that sunlight probably wouldnt show on that graph either, because of the scale. And the sun sun DOES make UV, Im sure you'll agree.

Unfortunately, I dont think there are actually studies SHOWING effect of uv spectrum variation on corals. At least that Im aware of. However, it is implausible that corals, which have spent 150 million years + evolving in conditions saturated with UV can suddenly live and thrive in environments without it.