Tweaking the LED

[Salty Cracker]

I just ordered one of the new 20"x6" black heatsinks to try out.  Right now I have a bunch of mismatched heatsinks over the tank, and wiring everywhere from when I was experimenting.  I plan to do 2 dimmable drivers on it.  One channel will be 14 Royal Blue, and the other channel will likely be 8 white, 4 UV and 2 RED.  These 2 channels will be piped through my apex (finally) for proper dimming control.  Hopefully everything gets here this week, and I can do a weekend build, as it's going to take a lot of dismantling.  If this one works, I plan to get 2 more to finalize my setup. Stay tuned. 

 

[TORX]

Sounds great to me.

On a side note, color LET's are normally driven at around 600mA instead of the 1500mA that whites can be run at. Putting then on the same string means that your whites will be at half power already. Just something to think about for the final temperature you are looking for.

Sent from my SGH-T989D using Tapatalk 2

 

[AdamS]

Im very interested to see the outcome. Why are you using royal blue only and no just blue? Why only 4 UV? My understanding is that corals require a great deal ov UV and that the UV LEDs available are not great, which would lead me to believe that more are required to compensate. From what i read UV intensity should be the same as the royal blue, and royal blue LEDs are pretty powerful. Keep us posted.

 

[Salty Cracker]

Im very interested to see the outcome. Why are you using royal blue only and no just blue? Why only 4 UV? My understanding is that corals require a great deal ov UV and that the UV LEDs available are not great, which would lead me to believe that more are required to compensate. From what i read UV intensity should be the same as the royal blue, and royal blue LEDs are pretty powerful. Keep us posted.

Well, I'm basing it on my current sps build that has absolutely NO UV bulbs at all.  Corals must get some of what they need from the whites and RB's.

As for the regular blue, they look a lot like green and kind of a nasty blue-green at that, so they're out.  For the past year I've run whites and RB only, and had pretty good growth.  I have, however, noticed much better coralline growth on the side of the tank near the window, making me think I could use a bit more UV.  All I know that a 50 50 split of whites and RB ends up with a very yellow 6500K look, and 100% RB looks awesome.  The UV's will be just for the corals.  Who knows, I might put thel UV instead of the reds, which really do a big disco effect in the tank. 

 

[Duke]

I have UV leds running right now, only 3 of them, they really don't do much at all, with nothing but the 3 running you do see the corals fluoresce somewhat.. but I wouldn't even call it light its more like invisible light.  the human eye doesn't see that end of the spectrum but from what I've read the corals really do see it and they are actually giving the corals a lot of light they need, im thinking about running a whole driver full of them (12) when I do some upgrades to my leds. good to know about the Blue leds because I did plan to add some of those, im thinking about a full driver of the hyper violet leds also, maybe a total of 10 or so across the whole tank, im going to skip the blues now tho, the reds I couldn't for the life of me figure out a way to make those work except maybe keeping them on a driver and running them very very low because at full strength it really isn't pretty. lol. I agree mixing colors on drivers isn't a good idea, its much nicer to use a smaller driver and for each color so you can really tweak it the way you want.

 

[Salty Cracker]

The only thing I can say about the blues...maybe they are useful frequency that the corals need, but I doubt it.

If I finish this build as I picture it, it will be 3x 20"x6" heatsinks with 80deg lenses and splash guards, 28 LEDs (as described) on each, and one 72"x1" 'sink with 24 RB LEDs (already in place as my actinic strip).  So in total there will be 12-18 UV bulbs in there, which as you say don't illuminate squat, but are supposedly beneficial. 

Shipping cost on the heatsinks is crazy, I should have my wife pick up across the border.

 

[AdamS]

Great info. I almost pulled the trigger on a DIY LED a week ago, your results will hopefully save me some money and make for a better product. I wonder if instead of the red leds, you threw in a few warm whites?

 

[Salty Cracker]

Great info. I almost pulled the trigger on a DIY LED a week ago, your results will hopefully save me some money and make for a better product. I wonder if instead of the red leds, you threw in a few warm whites?

the cool whites are already VERY yellow, I can't imagine the warm whites would do any kind of improvement.  Honestly if it was good for the corals, I'd have 95% RB and 5% cool whites.  What I'm waiting for is a ~12000K white LED.  It's gotta be coming.

 

[Duke]

I also agree, the cool whites have the same color as a regular warm compact florescent light almost, the warm leds I could see being used for a natural orange colored sunrise and sunset if u were using a controller to ramp them up and down. Sounds like a lot of hassle tho.

 

[AdamS]

The white LEDs are really just Royal Blues with a phospher on them that takes the 500nm light and shifts it out across the 500-700nm spectrum, the thicker the phospher, the closer to 700nm and the less efficient. The whites available now are all standard building lighting colours (2700k - 6500k) and thats why those are mass produced. Any colour is technically possible its just that aquarium lighting is a niche market that nobody (cree, philips, etc) cares about yet. In time they might.

When your new fixture is built i would love to see it, i will bring the beer.

 

[Salty Cracker]

The white LEDs are really just Royal Blues with a phospher on them that takes the 500nm light and shifts it out across the 500-700nm spectrum, the thicker the phospher, the closer to 700nm and the less efficient. The whites available now are all standard building lighting colours (2700k - 6500k) and thats why those are mass produced. Any colour is technically possible its just that aquarium lighting is a niche market that nobody (cree, philips, etc) cares about yet. In time they might.

When your new fixture is built i would love to see it, i will bring the beer.

Deal!

 

[Victoss]

I'm a big believer in UV* LEDs for growth, it's true that they will look dimmer to us in person and don't really affect the colour of the tank (they do a little for fluorescing corals but royal blues already take care of this in a much more efficient way) but if you were to look up the spectrums at which photosynthesis occurs you will see that it is utilized in areas such as Chlorophylla a.

*Note that when I talk about UV I really mean violet in the 410-420 area such as rapidled's, I know UV is under 400 so hush hush! This is also why you can't really find good 'true' UVs ($$ too) but it is still unknown how damaging UV can be to corals so I wouldn't' want too add too much true UV any ways.

As for the royal blues, this was the colour that was most accepted by everyone as the 'blue' to use and now is a staple in every LED build, they have a good spectrum and look to them (Then again every place has a different name and spectrum for their blues, RB tends to be the 450 area where blue is 460-470 looking at major distributors).

Now whites on the other hand are not really here for a specific spectrum but their looks. Cool white with RB has been the usual for a while but some have been experimenting because the combo tends to give a purple tint to it so what has been found was that Neutral white has a warmer spectrum and has a nicer look. The warmer spectrum is nice because we can get closer to the warmer side of chlorophyll a and b that photosynthesis uses too but people don't tend to like the really warm look the warm whites give, just too much, so for moderation neutral whites are starting to be popular as well as some reds (and cyan but that's another discussion  ).

aaannnnnnnd... that's my rant!

As for Saltys build I think you will really like the look of the heatsinks when done, I have 2 of those guys butt up against each other and it looks really nice. The wires are all hidden in the corner where the sides drop for the splash garde so no messy wires.  Best of luck with the re-build 

 

[Seggsy]

Most builds I have seen have the colours and whites on the same driver.  If UV would dim the other LED's on the same driver, I am wondering if they would be better with the blues, then have a mix of blues and less whites on the white driver, so it can be cranked up a bit.

Does that make sense, or should UV (or cyan, or red) be left with the whites?

 

[reeffreak]

After reading all this makes me even happier to have t5 lol this is way to much

 

[Duke]

Most builds I have seen have the colours and whites on the same driver.  If UV would dim the other LED's on the same driver, I am wondering if they would be better with the blues, then have a mix of blues and less whites on the white driver, so it can be cranked up a bit.

Does that make sense, or should UV (or cyan, or red) be left with the whites?

im currently running a driver with 14 RB and 3 UV Bulbs, and I run the driver at 100%, imo a separate dimmable channel is the best way to go for each color you intend to have, reds are just so over powering I think its impossible to have those with with any other LEDS your planning to run higher than at 10%. theres just not really a good way to mix colors on a single driver and still keep the ability to adjust the look to how u want.

 

[Salty Cracker]

I have the whites and blues mixed together on a driver, and I don't like it at all.  If I wasn't using dimmable drivers that would be one thing, but otherwise it's a waste.  These drivers are rated for a max of 14 LED's on a chain, so I don't think I'll exceed that, but maybe what I'll do is put the UV's on the Blues as suggeted, that way if I tune back the whites to get better colour, the corals are still getting their UV...

Oh and T5's are the AOL of lighting.  ;D

 

[Seggsy]

im currently running a driver with 14 RB and 3 UV Bulbs, and I run the driver at 100%, imo a separate dimmable channel is the best way to go for each color

So, you don't like the blue and UV on the same driver?  I wasn't going to do DIY, but just specify which colours I want on each driver.

 

[Duke]

the blue and the UV are fine.. its just the UV's I feel you want to run at 100% so if I added them to my white strings they wouldn't be doing much because I keep my whites at about 50%, im planning a small driver (7-12 LEDS) to swap all the UV's I currently have onto one driver with a bunch of new ones just because I do like being able to run them independently, I don't ramp them up and down but do have each driver fire up 15-20 minutes after the last one.. and shut down in the reverse order. so I start and end with just 1 string of royal blues, and build up to all 6 at midday of them and reverse it back down if that makes sense.

 

[Victoss]

The only problem with adding the UVs to the blues is now all you blues will be running at less then half their potential because most colours (including UVs) run max 600-700mA (lower depending where you buy) compared to the 1000-1500mA blues and whites can run at. So your trying to get the max out of the few UV you want to add to only decrease your blues to less then half. This will only work if the driver is really meant to be used for UV like on my build I have 8 UV on a driver with 4 RB, in this case the RB aren't the main LED on the driver and I'm only sacrificing 4 blue.

What would work best is if you had a driver for all the colours since most have the same current limitations, this also works out if you are trying to do a blue, cyan and red combo to get a 'white' end result. An example would be LEDGroupBuy's Ocean Coral White triple LED star which has all three of these colours but the result is white. This leads into a whole new world of trouble and research though, so for regular fixtures may not be an option (ie a lot more disco to troubleshoot).

 

[Duke]

so are you saying im overdriving my UV's or under driving the RB LEDS on the driver with the 3 UV's?