Tweaking the LED

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AdamS

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I have everything on separate channels except the 3 blues mixed in with the royal blues. I think once those come out and i replace with royal blues i will be pretty good.  And i prefer the royal blues with just a touch of warm white. Turn the warm whites on to a dull glow.

Phi, you are correct, a single optic for all the leds is better for mixing than individual optics for each led, however this is not very available.
 

Salty Cracker

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AdamS link said:
I have everything on separate channels except the 3 blues mixed in with the royal blues. I think once those come out and i replace with royal blues i will be pretty good.  And i prefer the royal blues with just a touch of warm white. Turn the warm whites on to a dull glow.

Phi, you are correct, a single optic for all the leds is better for mixing than individual optics for each led, however this is not very available.

Wouldn't a diffuser 'mix' the colours better, but reduce the overall par?  One of these days I'll have to get a par meter on this tank, but I've got to be doing pretty good even at 16" depth...
 

Salty Cracker

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Once you start growing high light corals on the bottom of the tank, a diffuser suddenly is much less important ;)


Hmmm I do have a bar in the basement with about 4000 disco lights... maybe I'm just desensitized. 
 
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phi delt reefer

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depends on the diffuser material

you get that cheap generic shit at home depot then yes you are limiting the light.

there are vendors who sell some stuff that has a 90-95% transmission rate with phenomenal diffusion abilities.  The link below is one that looks very promising.

http://www.fusionoptix.com/lighting/components/diffusers.htm

i dunno how expensive the stuff is for you need to contact their sales rep for a quote (stupid business model)

all you would need to do is bump up the % at which you run the LEDs and you should have the same par (assuming you never ran them at 100% before installing the diffuser of course)

I would assume you loose most of the shimmer though.
 

Salty Cracker

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I would think a big fresnel light would work :)


When I ran florescent there was 0 shimmer in the tank, so for me, lots of shimmer is a good thing (like shallow diving in good sun), I was just looking at mine and yeah, it's shimmering to high heaven, and I love it.  I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing.  Shimmer is very high in my tank, but I don't have a lot of the colour splitting refracting or whatever, where I see red/purple/blue/white dancing on a rock.  That's what I don't like.  Are we talking about the same thing?

Another issue with shimmer is obviously surface agitation.  I have my returns almost skimming the top of the tank, and that's 99% of the shimmer.  If I shut them down, shimmer is 0.  So that's possibly something to look at for those that want less shimmer
 

AdamS

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The problem with diffuser is that it sends light in every direction, and the light starts hitting the water at very small angles which is what causes it to bend wierd which causes the shimmering or separation of colours. What you need is a diffuser to mix the colours, then a single optic to direct the light straight down so it hits the water at 90degrees and does not bend. They have a system kinda like this, its called t5ho, but spectrum is limited...

On solution is for every colour we want in the aquarium, put on at least 12 or 24 leds and distribute evenly over the aquarium so you do not create hot spots, then use dimming to adjust levels and get spectrum we want, as phi suggested.

I did this on my build (which i will create a thread for when a get some time) except for the blues. Thats the source of my problem /end threadjack

Saltys system has a large number of leds spread out over his aquarium and i did not notice any shimmering when i saw it, it looked really really good.
 
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phi delt reefer

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i dont mind shimmer...

i just hate seeing a blue spot here or a white spot there, etc. its very obvious on a tank with a huge clean white sandbed. If you got not color banding but just lots of shimmer then your setup is solid IMO.

Glenn - when you turn off your returns and your shimmer disappears, do you get the disco ball effect then?
 

Salty Cracker

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phi delt reefer link said:
i dont mind shimmer...

i just hate seeing a blue spot here or a white spot there, etc. its very obvious on a tank with a huge clean white sandbed. If you got not color banding but just lots of shimmer then your setup is solid IMO.

Glenn - when you turn off your returns and your shimmer disappears, do you get the disco ball effect then?

Only if just the UV/Violets are on.  I can see reds and purples, and as adam said, a sort of double image.

Now spotlighting, that's entirely different monster.  I think of disco effect as looking at one spot and seeing red, then purple, then blue then white.  Shimmer to me is just the underwater wave refraction, but spotlighting would be a spot of blue in one spot, a white spot, a green spot, etc, is that what you mean?  If so.... yes I did get that with my original setup that had only 12 LEDs per panel.  Definitely.  Now with 36 LEDs per panel, no it's pretty uniform, HOWEVER one bulb difference in a panel can make a difference in the overall colour.  For example I have 8 cool whites in one panel, and the other ones have 6 each...the one with 8 have a very distinct 6500K look on the substrate, and the other panels are more 14000K

But I mean it makes sense that more lights in the same physical area are going to blend better.
 

Salty Cracker

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I will say that in hindsight...I would NOT go for the solderless LED's again.

My issues:

1) They just aren't as bright.  Even swapping drivers, they aren't as bright as the soldered equivalent.
2) a string of them can go and there's no easy way to figure out which one it is... I have a set out now, but each bulb works individually from the solder pads on them (with a battery-tester thing), but the string of light is still dead, so a bad connector, I'll have to swap them out one by one like a christmas string, a ROYAL PITA.
3) the connectors are weak.  I had 2 break off the bases when installing, and I wasn't being overly tough with them.

So for me, back to regular soldered LEDs.  These are a good idea, and a lot easier to set up initially, but worse overall. 
 

Salty Cracker

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AdamS link said:
I agree with the soldered leds. I find the solderless ones look like shit too cause the wires are too long.
mine worked out really well wiring wise, they are as neat or neater than the soldered, but I found the 'bad' bulb, was a royal pain, yet it works if I solder it in... weird design. 

IMHO it would be better to have a tiny screw post connector on each side of the LED, and wire as you would the regular way.  Probably more expensive but it would eliminate the pressure needed to insert the plug, the terminator pieces, etc etc.  I still think color coding the LED stars would be nice, or at least label each one on the board, more useful than his logo painted on each one.
 

Salty Cracker

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I should try and snap some current photos.  The colours on the coral is absolutely unreal.  I may -finally- be getting MH colours with LED.  I'll see if I can get some good shots a little later. 
 

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AdamS link said:
Can you sum up how many of each colour LED you have, and the respective drive currents?

Hmm.  I'll have to go up and take a look, there's 3 channels on each 'sink and then 2 drivers for the RB strip.  I'll count out everything shortly. :)
 

Salty Cracker

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Okay, when I first added the UV, I was pretty upset that the tank 'bleached' itself out.  I now see that basically the corals dropped all the 'brown' that had bothered me so much (anything I got from Darryl for example would go brown...grow, but was dark brown except at tips).  Here are 4 shots I took, maybe give you an idea,
a1: Tricolour acro.  Had been purple at tips, brown everywhere else.  Now had dark tips, white body.
a2:sunset millie.  Had been light yellow, green polyps and brown base.  Base went white as you can see.
a3: True undata.  Was dark green with white polyps, went pure white with blue edges and beige polyps.  Was quite ugly.
a4: Bonsai.  Kept it's colour better than some others, but still was very pale.
 

Salty Cracker

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Okay, here are the today shots.  There is improvement across the board.
1 - tricolour.  It came back with green at the tips, purple next, then pale blue.  Looks fantastic.
2 - fresh frag from Darryl.  Instead of going brown, this one encrusted in green and kept its bright yellow.  For me this is a 'win'. 
3 - Red planet.  Tips are florescent, see-through purple/red.  Everything else is an awesome green except the new growth tip that is white.  Encrusting like crazy.
4 - Orange crush.  Growth took off, this piece had been small for over a year, now is about double the size in 4 months.
5 - Bonzai.  2x as many polyps and growth is quite noticeable in 3-4 months from the previous pic.  this had been a slow grower. 
6 - Undata.  Came back much richer.  Still has blue growth rim.  Getting so big it's going to have to be cut back. 
7 - Green cap.  Growth took off, polyps went from green to yellow. 
8 - Banana tabler.  This one is from Darryl, and had been a disappointment.  Was brown and white, now it's white with a lot of yellow on top (couldn't get angle on the yellow). 
9 - Ice blue millie.  This one was almost a throwaway.  It looks green in this pic but it is ice ice blue.  Growth again has taken off.
10 - confused monti.  I had to put some putty around to get it to grow out, but look at the colour.  I think I've had this maybe 2 months now, and it's in a very shady area, look at the colour.
11 - and finally, my sunset millie.  Just look how the colour came back.  This is what I saw in Darryls tank, This makes me happy.  I -think- that's a palmers to the right and a cool pink millie to the left that had been almost 100% brown. 

anyway, sorry for long post. 
 

Salty Cracker

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Previously it would take me a year to grow 1-2" on a frag.  It was crazy.  I'm getting that in 2 months now.  I was sooooo close to going back to T5.  Finally it might start looking like I have colonies and not a frag tank lol. 
 

Neopimp

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your tank is woefully under sized for naso tangs... and 20 damsels...
 
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