Ratios

[markalot]

MINT?

 

I am seeing amazing things with the NanoBox arrays and Lime. There was a long thread ove ron RC about White LED's killing acros and I'm a believer. There's something about the spectrum of a white LED that really harms acro health and coloration. Lower the white downs and fool your eyes with Lime and bingo, coloration.

[jedimasterben]

MINT?

 

I am seeing amazing things with the NanoBox arrays and Lime. There was a long thread ove ron RC about White LED's killing acros and I'm a believer. There's something about the spectrum of a white LED that really harms acro health and coloration. Lower the white downs and fool your eyes with Lime and bingo, coloration.

Those threads are full of nothing but complete horseshit. If white LEDs killed acropora, then we wouldn't have any because they'd all be dead in the wild.

[markalot]

Those threads are full of nothing but complete horseshit. If white LEDs killed acropora, then we wouldn't have any because they'd all be dead in the wild.

 

Most people running too much white don't have any acros. Those that do got the coverage right and turned down the whites, everyone else switched to halide, T5, or hybrid. They may not kill acros but the results are pretty bad. I'm also a bit confused because the white LED spectrum doesn't come close to matching the sun.

 

The best evidence for LED is a visually crisp white and bright tank with beautifully colored acros.

[Horerczy]

The sun encompasses everything a white led has and more.

 

 

The at sea level (red part) is particularly interesting when you consider shallow water species (including certain acros iirc) that get exposed to this light during low tide.

[jedimasterben]

Most people running too much white don't have any acros. Those that do got the coverage right and turned down the whites, everyone else switched to halide, T5, or hybrid. They may not kill acros but the results are pretty bad. I'm also a bit confused because the white LED spectrum doesn't come close to matching the sun.

 

The best evidence for LED is a visually crisp white and bright tank with beautifully colored acros.

Complete horseshit. Most of the coral farms I've helped transition to LED were using 6500K metal halides. Please find me an LED fixture with enough 'white' light to replace that lamp, which has very little blue light from 445-465nm that LED fixtures are dominated by. If that lamp cannot kill acropora from 'too much white light', then there isn't one that can.

 

You can also look at Tim Wijgerde's data on the Philips Coralcare fixture they pitted against a dozen ATI Aquablue Special lamps. The amount of green and red light those contain is immense, far more than even the radiant white light on the Coralcare fixture which is not very blue heavy, and corals on both sides grew great.

[markalot]

SHOW ME THE CORALS

 

And stop spouting your evangelist BS. Either have a conversation or assume I'm some dumb jackass who can't grow a colored stick with LED and move on.

 

The spectrum of the 6500K bulb looks nothing like a white LED.

[markalot]

So tell me this.

 

Why is the defense of the white LED so strong? If I put crappy cool white T5 bulbs over my tank I'd probably kill my acros. T5 sucks? The spectrum has to be wrong because it is hard as hell to color up acros under LED and a good number of folks experience dead acros. The answer is not all BS because it's happened to too many people. You get the PAR right and the colors still stink, you get it bright to the eye and the acros get bleached.

 

Saying white LED contains all the same frequencies is really missing the point by a long shot. It's the balance, and most importantly what it looks like to our eyes. If it looks dim people will crank it up and kill the corals. The resulting balance is wrong and many corals can't adapt.

 

It doesn't have to be like this, just turn down the white and replace it with a peak that makes the tank bright and the corals can tolerate.

[markalot]

Here is the PDF commissioned by Phillips proving their fixture is great.

 

http://www.coralpublications.com/CoralCare%20LED%20unit%20-%20Preliminary%20Field%20Test%20Report%20-%20FINAL%20v3.pdf

 

Here is the coral care site.

 

http://www.philips.co.uk/c-m-li/coralcare

 

Most of the acros look like crap, no really, but are alive. Exception might be Jens in Germany but I do not know what the light settings are in any of these examples. What is the LED makeup of the coral care?

 

Here, here is Jens tank. Full zeovit , settings are 49% intensity, 90% warm and 100% blue.

 

No idea what that means but of course I'm going to suspect it means a dim tank heavy on blue, and full zeo means dosing and feeding has been adjusted to try and bring out the best colors.

[jedimasterben]

SHOW ME THE CORALS

 

And stop spouting your evangelist BS. Either have a conversation or assume I'm some dumb jackass who can't grow a colored stick with LED and move on.

 

The spectrum of the 6500K bulb looks nothing like a white LED.

The thing is that I know​ you're not a dumb jackass, which is why I don't quite understand why you're on the wrong side

 

A 6500K metal halide lamp does look nothing like a white LED - spectrally, it is far​ worse, containing immense amounts of green, amber, and red, which are considered the 'problem' 'algae growing' 'coral killing' spectra, yet corals grow like wildfire under them and don't just flat-out die like people are claiming white LEDs do.

 

So tell me this.

 

Why is the defense of the white LED so strong? If I put crappy cool white T5 bulbs over my tank I'd probably kill my acros. T5 sucks? The spectrum has to be wrong because it is hard as hell to color up acros under LED and a good number of folks experience dead acros. The answer is not all BS because it's happened to too many people. You get the PAR right and the colors still stink, you get it bright to the eye and the acros get bleached.

 

Saying white LED contains all the same frequencies is really missing the point by a long shot. It's the balance, and most importantly what it looks like to our eyes. If it looks dim people will crank it up and kill the corals. The resulting balance is wrong and many corals can't adapt.

 

It doesn't have to be like this, just turn down the white and replace it with a peak that makes the tank bright and the corals can tolerate.

You'd kill nothing if you swapped all of your T5 to Aquablue Special (though you'd likely want to raise the fixture a bit to reduce PAR back to where you have it now). You'd lose immediate fluoresce and any pigments that rely on more blue in relation to green and red in order to express, but beyond that, you'd never flat out kill anything of what you have. Even the corals that can be confirmed as collected from 'deeper' waters that in the wild are never exposed to any red light, they'd survive and grow, all other things equal - they just wouldn't look like what you'd see in a blue-heavy tank.

 

Here is the PDF commissioned by Phillips proving their fixture is great.

 

http://www.coralpublications.com/CoralCare%20LED%20unit%20-%20Preliminary%20Field%20Test%20Report%20-%20FINAL%20v3.pdf

 

Here is the coral care site.

 

http://www.philips.co.uk/c-m-li/coralcare

 

Most of the acros look like crap, no really, but are alive. Exception might be Jens in Germany but I do not know what the light settings are in any of these examples. What is the LED makeup of the coral care?

 

Here, here is Jens tank. Full zeovit , settings are 49% intensity, 90% warm and 100% blue.

 

No idea what that means but of course I'm going to suspect it means a dim tank heavy on blue, and full zeo means dosing and feeding has been adjusted to try and bring out the best colors.

The Coralcare fixture is split into two channels, the 'warm' channel (containing cyan, white, and PC amber, kind of like lime except is amber and red instead of green) and 'blue' channel (which contains violet, royal blue, and blue). So he's essentially running an even split per channel, and the fixture is set to a maximum total intensity of 49%, so the tank would not be heavy blue. They use 40x cool white, 32x royal blue, 16x violet, 8x PC amber, and 8x cyan in each fixture. Here is a link to the PDF file that contains a small writeup and photos of his tank (though the photos are generally poor quality, overexposed blue and not clear focus) http://images.philips.com/is/content/PhilipsConsumer/PDFDownloads/United%20Kingdom/ODLI20160615_001-UPD-en_GB-Jens%20Standke-18052016.pdfHe was two months in with using the Coralcare fixtures when that was written, how long does it take for the acros in the tank to die from using the white LEDs? This is the whole point I'm trying to argue.

 

Why aren't the corals that Adam at Battlecorals is growing under his Reefbreeders fixtures (with the whites up high to mimic the Iwasaki 6500K) all dead? He has plenty of beautiful corals growing in all of his tanks, and he is all acro all the time.

 

Sanjay Joshi currently uses eight Radion G2 Pro over his 500g tank. He uses all channels, including white, red, and green, at 100% intensity and overall intensity to 100% for most of the day, and in the evening the blue and royal blue channels run way down because he is like me and hates the windex look His acros are growing out of control. Find his tank writeup here: http://reef2reef.com/ams/dr-joshi%E2%80%99s-500-gallon-sps-dominated-mixed-reef.2/

 

The main issue with people killing their acropora (among plenty of other genii) with LEDs is that they try to match visual brightness with their previous lighting without verifying PAR, and the corals can't handle the shock. This is why mint, lime, and PC amber should have significantly more market penetration than they do, because they fix the issue at very little cost.

 

There is plenty of evidence to support corals growing extremely well under LED, including white LEDs. There is plenty of evidence to support corals being extremely colorful under LED, including white LEDs. What there isn't evidence to support is that white LEDs are what is killing acropora when people make the switch.

[markalot]

I'm not sure if you understand that you did not dispute anything I said. That's all really. Of course corals can grow under white LED, but it won't look good to the eye. I bet if we visited Adam at battlecorals we would both comment about how dimly lit the tank is. He's doing it for growth.

 

If he gets good color from all whites that's great, call me a skeptic. He's a pretty smart dude, and if I were him I'd color up under a different spectrum. Maybe he does. The defense of white LED's still doesn't make any sense unless you sacrifice looks for something else. You have to have a PAR meter and you have to balance so the tank looks like crap (opinion). Similar to how bad a tank looks under all ABS, but the ABS can still color corals very very well. Someone on RC ran all ABS and the colors were outstanding.

 

Face it Ben, if it was easy to do under LED we wouldn't even be having this discussion. The excuses LED users come up with for not being able to post pictures that match T5 and Halide tanks are comical. So many LED fixtures, so few visible results.

 

Here's the most recent post tank news I can find from Joshi.

 

https://reefs.com/2016/01/05/leds-500-gallon-reef/

 

Those are not good colors (edit, except that small blue one in there, I want that one) and as is typical with LED, no striking reds. Someone with Sanjay's talent should be able to show images better than that. In drawbacks he also references the heavy blue spectrum, longing for a more full spectrum look. My hypothesis is that if his LED fixture contained Lime and possibly Mint he could achieve a more full spectrum look AND improve all coral colors and growth. Why? Something about white led doesn't work. You and I can only guess as to why, but the acro response to white LED tends to be very poor.

 

I do think that if you could achieve and identical spectrum to a T5 or halide bulb you would get identical results, assuming you could duplicate light spread. There is no reason to think LED's themselves are the problem. Why does the Radium halide bulb produce so many incredible SPS tanks when the spectrum is nothing like one a coral might receive in the wild? Dumb luck. It was a bulb meant for parking lots, not reef tanks.

 

So I do firmly believe white LEDs have harmed LED's reputation for reef tanks and their use needs to be strictly limited. The goal should be to achieve the same results as the other technologies,and copying spectrum is a great place to start. You can better do this with less white LED. I bet a few years from now the Nanobox v6.2 arrays will only have one white led per puck.

 

I still run white, just very low and only to help produce a good white. Lime is the primary white light for me, and so far the results have been pretty incredible. The T5's shut off at 8, while I was typing this diatribe, and the tank still looks awesome. The sandbed is white, not blue, and all the colors still show up. The 40 is running the Razor only after 8pm, whites dimming down, and the sandbed is blue. With whites at 50% the sandbed is this awful yellow/violet color.

 

Final note. Here is the spectrum of that 6500K halide.

 

 

Near equal peaks in Blue, cyan, and green. This looks incredibly bright to the eye and also peaks in ranges corals ARE used too with no unnatural dip below 550. People discovered if they added more blue or actinic they could achieve better colors as well.

[jedimasterben]

What I want to know is why aren't all of their acropora dead? That is the point that you were arguing. Their colors are also fantastic - the link I gave above has a few more photos of Sanjay's tank, and he has dozens more on Facebook, and you can also go back and find photos of his corals before he swapped out his 400w halides (which were not heavy blue, either, and his acros still weren't dead). You could also ask Adam for a comparison, he is usually pretty into things like that. I lost his phone number or I'd text him and ask. He is a firm believer in white LEDs, though, that much I can tell you.

 

If LEDs had been around 20 years ago in their current form just like metal halide and T5 and not several years worth of garbage like the Marineland strips, then you'd be seeing the results that you see in tanks running for many years that will pump out great looking and growing coral. There was one featured tank on DD that was six or seven years old and was using the same cool white and royal blue Cree XR-E on a basic timer for the entire time. Corals didn't look the best from the lack of red, but were healthy.

 

Be that as it may, you cannot simply ignore what good results are coming in from noobs and longtime hobbyists alike. There are quite a few on here, Reefcentral, and R2R. Sanjay's colors are good, the only way you could say they weren't is if you were expecting an all blue tank with only corals that glow, which he isn't into. That is personal preference and is subjective, not objective. Objectively, his corals look as they should, are healthy, and growing out of his tank. Again, you were saying that they should be dead, since he is using his white LEDs at 100%, and this is simply not the case.

 

You say that I'm not disputing what you said, yet you are providing no evidence that white LEDs are what is killing acropora, and then say that yes corals can grow under white LEDs but can't be colorful, which current evidence also does not support - and in addition, what I consider colorful is not what you would and vice versa.

 

Lime contains no red, and neither does mint. Remove all white and you'd see non-fluorescent colors suffer. This is not important to everyone, especially those that run heavy blue, but those of us that don't, we appreciate warmer white LEDs and that red spectrum for giving us colors we would absolutely not be able to see without it. This takes a certain amount of radiometric wattage to get these pigments to express and for our eyes to pick up on their reflection, and one white LED wouldn help out it if you had overwhelming blue

[metrokat]

So. Like. My RSM ran a 6500K bulb on the T5s. Recommended by ReHype. Certainly grew everything like crazy. The Kat colony became the crowning glory of the tank under it.

[markalot]

It's true, I did say white LED kills corals and that is not true, or it's isn't literally true. I thought you might realize that but instead i got lumped with the LED kills coral crowd. Groovy.

 

The insistence of using white LED's has killed a lot of corals through no fault of the LED, it's a human factors error. There is no proof that simply turning on all white LED's above a tank and keeping PAR appropriate will kill acros.

 

I dunno, maybe it's because I'm older, but if you make a cool technology and it's difficult to use it will fail until someone comes along and builds the better mousetrap. It's dead simple, the visual output of even some of the more modern features is complete crap and still more difficult to use then plugging in a bulb and turning it on. There is no excuse for it. People should not need to own PAR meters to light a tank. This thread ends like the thread on RC. Arguing with someone who doesn't keep acros about how LED's can grow them just as well and the visual evidence is sorely lacking. Not completely missing, but obviously lacking.

 

As LED fixtures improve we will see less white LED's used or even completely eliminated as people figure out they are not needed to grow corals.

 

 

That green peak is no accident as you well know. It helps provide visual clues as to how bright the lights are. The frequencies around it are significantly lower than the green peak and yet this can grow any acro anyone has ever tried to grow AND color them up. You won't see the majority of people struggling with this bulb and you won't have to seek out experts who have proved it can be done. Of course it can. There will be failures, there will always be failures, but it's much easier with T5s than LED's. Why?

 

 

Force the same number of people to grow acros under all white LEDs and you will have a very low success rate. Most will end up with pale corals, some dead, and maybe a few will get good results through dumb luck. Why? Can't tell you exactly.

 

I suspect it's the lack of a sharp green peak. In order to get the same visual brightness you are putting a lot of energy into the tank that corals may not be able to adapt too. Look at all the 650 that would be produced just to achieve the same brightness as the Coral+ bulb.

 

You cannot compare it to the sun because even if the curve was the same, underwater, at a depth the coral naturally grows, there is no way in hell most will understand how much they have to feed to maintain health.

 

So why in the hell would anyone use a white LED with this in mind? If you had a system capable of feeding appropriate amounts, and exporting it, I think you could grow acros under most any light. This is probably what Adam discovered, that not only coudl he get LED's to work but if he used white, which has similar if not more spectral energy (is that even a term?) that that old halide, and he feeds a lot the growth would be insane.

 

But White LED still has blood on its hands. Reef keepers with long term experience in other technology could not figure out why the hell LED was killing corals. It's a misnomer of course, LED is not killing the coral, it just requires a completely different skill set and provides for different results.

 

White LED's don't kill corals, people kill corals.

[theatrus]

Just for graph-staring purposes, I "remixed" the Luxeon C datasheet PDF (all the charts are vector art!) to highlight the three most interesting (to me) white or visually white LEDs. Excuse some of the messy legend, I didn't spend much time splicing them together in Illustrator. Also, important disclaimer: I mixed two different "normalized power" charts together (white and colors), which is not correct as there is no guarantee the two charts are normalized to the same levels. The spectral distribution is the same, but the vertical scaling between the Mint and the two whites may be different.

 

 

 

The 5700k 90CRI white trends a "solar" profile very well. Despite being labeled as a "cool white", its very different than the super-high-lumens-but-ugly-useless cool whites, and has a spectral range that exceeds a warm white without the significant 600nm peak. I have yet to try to grow any coral with it of course

[Horerczy]

-snip-

Sooo ... What you're saying is that it's the fault of people that didn't take the time to acclimate the coral to their lighting properly then?

 

 

 

 

The 5700k 90CRI white trends a "solar" profile very well. Despite being labeled as a "cool white", its very different than the super-high-lumens-but-ugly-useless cool whites, and has a spectral range that exceeds a warm white without the significant 600nm peak. I have yet to try to grow any coral with it of course

That 5600K 90CRI spectrum is nize.

 

The similarities between the mint and the warm white are very interesting.

[markalot]

Sooo ... What you're saying is that it's the fault of people that didn't take the time to acclimate the coral to their lighting properly then?

 

 

 

Why do you say this? My point is the other technologies didn't need special acclimation. Why are the LED proponents so blind to this and even when I blame the users they have to blame them MORE. I just don't get it. I would add there is also much more to acclimating acros, you have to change husbandry practices to keep them relatively healthy as well. Add this to the fact you have little dials to change the spectrum and it's a disaster waiting to happen.

 

I think I also explained that without a PAR meter it doesn't appear to the user any acclimation is needed.

[Horerczy]

Wow ask for clarification and get my head bit off.

 

As I'm sure you know, acclimating light to coral was a thing before LEDs. With halides, t5, t8, PC, and even t12 it is a matter of changing height of the fixture or limiting the number of lamps lit for a given duration. Or for the deeper tanks just slowly raising the corals to the top of the tank. Leds just trade this for the turn of a (possibly metaphorical) knob. Acclimation is thus a good practice regardless of whether it really is necessary for a given situation.

[markalot]

Wow ask for clarification and get my head bit off.

 

As I'm sure you know, acclimating light to coral was a thing before LEDs. With halides, t5, t8, PC, and even t12 it is a matter of changing height of the fixture or limiting the number of lamps lit for a given duration. Or for the deeper tanks just slowly raising the corals to the top of the tank. Leds just trade this for the turn of a (possibly metaphorical) knob. Acclimation is thus a good practice regardless of whether it really is necessary for a given situation.

 

 

Sorry, I have been testy this entire thread, you didn't deserve that.

 

I blame the spectral balance of LED fixtures for the issues, and most of the blame can be placed on the manufacturers, the white LED is a fun thing to pick on though. You need a PAR meter to correctly acclimate with most early and now cheaper LED fixtures. You do not get a visual clue how bright the light is like you do with older technologies.

 

It makes no sense that Halide users with a lot of experience could not adapt to LED. I get very testy because for years I've read the same thing, how users are to blame for all the issues. It's easy to blame the users but the fault is with the fixtures and the primary blame lies with the white led.

[KnH]

Why do you say this? My point is the other technologies didn't need special acclimation. Why are the LED proponents so blind to this and even when I blame the users they have to blame them MORE. I just don't get it. I would add there is also much more to acclimating acros, you have to change husbandry practices to keep them relatively healthy as well. Add this to the fact you have little dials to change the spectrum and it's a disaster waiting to happen.

 

I think I also explained that without a PAR meter it doesn't appear to the user any acclimation is needed.

I definitely remember poring over Sanjay's articles and par tests of different reflectors and MH bulbs and the differences between magnetic and electronic ballasts numbers, over and under driving certain bulbs, lots and lots of info to take in. Mixing different wattages , ballasts, bulbs, reflectors,

 

I remember that it was suggested that when you picked up a frag locally to get the info on what lighting that they used, and tank placement, another suggestion was to use multiple layers of screen to get your corals used to a different lighting setup, removing a layer of screen every couple of days, and we were always moving frags hoping to find its happy placement spot, people changed from 400 watt MH down to 250 watts or went up to 400 watts based on the numbers and different reflectors.

 

Then there were Grimreefers T5 threads..............

 

LEDs remind me a lot of the T5 threads and the mix and match of different bulbs

 

It has always been about acclimation, everyone copying everyone else.

[jedimasterben]

It's true, I did say white LED kills corals and that is not true, or it's isn't literally true. I thought you might realize that but instead i got lumped with the LED kills coral crowd. Groovy.

 

The insistence of using white LED's has killed a lot of corals through no fault of the LED, it's a human factors error. There is no proof that simply turning on all white LED's above a tank and keeping PAR appropriate will kill acros.

 

I dunno, maybe it's because I'm older, but if you make a cool technology and it's difficult to use it will fail until someone comes along and builds the better mousetrap. It's dead simple, the visual output of even some of the more modern features is complete crap and still more difficult to use then plugging in a bulb and turning it on. There is no excuse for it. People should not need to own PAR meters to light a tank. This thread ends like the thread on RC. Arguing with someone who doesn't keep acros about how LED's can grow them just as well and the visual evidence is sorely lacking. Not completely missing, but obviously lacking.

 

As LED fixtures improve we will see less white LED's used or even completely eliminated as people figure out they are not needed to grow corals.

 

http://i.imgur.com/0jsosbc.png

 

That green peak is no accident as you well know. It helps provide visual clues as to how bright the lights are. The frequencies around it are significantly lower than the green peak and yet this can grow any acro anyone has ever tried to grow AND color them up. You won't see the majority of people struggling with this bulb and you won't have to seek out experts who have proved it can be done. Of course it can. There will be failures, there will always be failures, but it's much easier with T5s than LED's. Why?

 

http://i.imgur.com/j3fIidp.jpg

 

Force the same number of people to grow acros under all white LEDs and you will have a very low success rate. Most will end up with pale corals, some dead, and maybe a few will get good results through dumb luck. Why? Can't tell you exactly.

 

I suspect it's the lack of a sharp green peak. In order to get the same visual brightness you are putting a lot of energy into the tank that corals may not be able to adapt too. Look at all the 650 that would be produced just to achieve the same brightness as the Coral+ bulb.

 

You cannot compare it to the sun because even if the curve was the same, underwater, at a depth the coral naturally grows, there is no way in hell most will understand how much they have to feed to maintain health.

 

So why in the hell would anyone use a white LED with this in mind? If you had a system capable of feeding appropriate amounts, and exporting it, I think you could grow acros under most any light. This is probably what Adam discovered, that not only coudl he get LED's to work but if he used white, which has similar if not more spectral energy (is that even a term?) that that old halide, and he feeds a lot the growth would be insane.

 

But White LED still has blood on its hands. Reef keepers with long term experience in other technology could not figure out why the hell LED was killing corals. It's a misnomer of course, LED is not killing the coral, it just requires a completely different skill set and provides for different results.

 

White LED's don't kill corals, people kill corals.

I was only going by what you said, and your exact quote was about white LEDs killing acros and that you were a believer

 

The main issue I'm arguing is that light is light - there is no difference to a coral whether the light above it is from an LED or metal halide. Light is just a wave (although it also a particle and therefore has mass, which leads to some bitchin' awesome stuff like LightSail) made up of photons of different colors. Corals grown under solely cool white LEDs (which is what is pictured above, a very poor looking diode, too) will be no less 'healthy' than corals grown under the Purple Plus lamp in the other picture, though they will not look the same, which is the point you're trying to make now. You're linking health and color too closely - the two do work hand in hand, but they maintain their personal space between them, like a good handshake.

 

Look at a photo of a wild reef, especially a shallow one, and look for colorful acropora - they're few and far between, with the vast majority being brown with little to no other color, but that doesn't mean that they are unhealthy - take a blue flashlight to them and you'll see somewhat their 'true' colors like we see in captivity with blue-heavy lighting. They are being blasted by not only significant violet and blue light but also by significant green and red, which drowns out that fluorescence and can cause the coral to build up more protective proteins to help absorb more light to protect the coral and its zooxanthellae.

 

White LEDs are required to remove the need for a dozen different dedicated colored LEDs (which will still have less spectral coverage and introduce significant color banding) to bring CRI up enough so that you can actually see fish and coral that do not fluoresce. You mentioned in your thread that setting up the five channels on your new hybrid was tedious, just imagine how it would be with a dozen channels, each controlling a very narrow spectral peak.

 

 

I've made a few of those over the years, and beyond the difficulty in tuning them, they still didn't look 'right' since it is missing significant spectral coverage (anything less than 0.5 on the intensity will have little to no effect in the tank), not to mention the cost goes up significantly since you need more diodes, more drivers, and more controller channels.

 

There will likely never be a quality fixture without white LEDs beyond a 'proof of concept' - as time goes on, we will see white LEDs still being used, but what will be disappearing are high output, low CRI cool white LEDs. Phosphor tech is constantly improving, just look at what Philips (now just Lumileds) was able to do with a royal blue LED, they made lime and PC amber using special phosphor mixes, and now mint, and high CRI cool white LEDs. We keep hoping for a broad-spectrum blue, but that's not likely to happen for quite a while, unfortunately, and the resulting LEDs will probably not have very high output due to needing to be violet-based instead of royal blue-based, and in addition their price tags will be scary. The Luxeon UV is the highest output violet LED on the market, and they are $15-40 each unmounted.

 

It will be a great day when the next wave of fixtures are released and we'll no longer see dedicated green, amber, or red diodes, instead replaced with a couple of high CRI warm white LEDs. Maybe Ecotech will experiment with their now 'budget' line of AI fixtures, like they did with their 'Hyperdrive' idea.

 

Just for graph-staring purposes, I "remixed" the Luxeon C datasheet PDF (all the charts are vector art!) to highlight the three most interesting (to me) white or visually white LEDs. Excuse some of the messy legend, I didn't spend much time splicing them together in Illustrator. Also, important disclaimer: I mixed two different "normalized power" charts together (white and colors), which is not correct as there is no guarantee the two charts are normalized to the same levels. The spectral distribution is the same, but the vertical scaling between the Mint and the two whites may be different.

 

http://theatr.us/images/blueacro/spectrum/luxeon-c-whites.png

 

 

The 5700k 90CRI white trends a "solar" profile very well. Despite being labeled as a "cool white", its very different than the super-high-lumens-but-ugly-useless cool whites, and has a spectral range that exceeds a warm white without the significant 600nm peak. I have yet to try to grow any coral with it of course

I have a pair of Bridgelux Specialty Décor Vero 18 5600K 90CRI (datasheet here) over my planted tank (along with a pair of Vero 10 Décor Ultra 2700K 97CRI) and they're gorgeous chips with excellent color rendering. They're almost to the point where the warm white over the planted tank is not needed at all, but I like it still add a little bit to give that extra 'oomph' for red plants, even though I still don't have any

 

My point is the other technologies didn't need special acclimation.

KnH hit the nail on the head, they definitely do.

[markalot]

 

KnH hit the nail on the head, they definitely do.

 

 

Visual clues missing is the point I'm trying to make. Too hard to acclimate without extra tools. You have to respect those old timers who may be grumpy but also were able to grow corals with older technology. Visual clues are important, but I do think you are glossing over one other point and that is the spectrum is different and contains a lot more energy than halide or T5. This requires husbandry changes as well to be able to keep some corals happy.

 

Ironically I'm going to say ... a spectrum more similar to the sun is going to require conditions more similar to the wild, which is not something most reef tanks can produce. Acros are the most difficult here because when bathed in a lot of light they need a lot fo food AND still require clean water. It's a catch 22.

 

I think we need to accept the fact that while producing wild like conditions is interesting we seemed to have accidentally stumbled on success with older technologies where spectrums radically different from the smooth sunlight curve actually worked better.

 

The Radium is the prime example, and as an aside it can produce beautiful reds in corals as well without having a high CRI.

 

 

 

So let me rephrase or do a workflow to help make the point that I am apparently failing to make.

 

T5/Halide:

 

Use visual clues to set brightness, acclimate corals by starting low and raising them up.

 

LED:

 

Use a PAR meter to set levels.

Acclimate corals the same

Change feeding habits due to some species requiring more food to survive. It seems that for some people running higher NO3 and PO4 works as well as increased feedings.

 

I still believe the future of reef led fixtures will involve less white. I don;t think it's a good idea to try and reproduce sunlight in a reef tank, especially since we've seemed to stumble into something that works better. But that is purely subjective.

[jedimasterben]

Visual clues missing is the point I'm trying to make. Too hard to acclimate without extra tools. You have to respect those old timers who may be grumpy but also were able to grow corals with older technology. Visual clues are important, but I do think you are glossing over one other point and that is the spectrum is different and contains a lot more energy than halide or T5. This requires husbandry changes as well to be able to keep some corals happy.

 

Ironically I'm going to say ... a spectrum more similar to the sun is going to require conditions more similar to the wild, which is not something most reef tanks can produce. Acros are the most difficult here because when bathed in a lot of light they need a lot fo food AND still require clean water. It's a catch 22.

 

I think we need to accept the fact that while producing wild like conditions is interesting we seemed to have accidentally stumbled on success with older technologies where spectrums radically different from the smooth sunlight curve actually worked better.

 

The Radium is the prime example, and as an aside it can produce beautiful reds in corals as well without having a high CRI.

 

 

 

So let me rephrase or do a workflow to help make the point that I am apparently failing to make.

 

T5/Halide:

 

Use visual clues to set brightness, acclimate corals by starting low and raising them up.

 

LED:

 

Use a PAR meter to set levels.

Acclimate corals the same

Change feeding habits due to some species requiring more food to survive. It seems that for some people running higher NO3 and PO4 works as well as increased feedings.

 

I still believe the future of reef led fixtures will involve less white. I don;t think it's a good idea to try and reproduce sunlight in a reef tank, especially since we've seemed to stumble into something that works better. But that is purely subjective.

 

I think we're meeting in the middle more now than we were

 

I definitely agree that without that prominent green spike (even on the Radium it was enough to be perceived as visually bright), initial settings and acclimation is more difficult - but really the same acclimation 'rules' can still apply, just with software instead of raising/lowering. This is one reason that dedicated green LEDs were used initially (in addition to removing some of the purple cast that some white LEDs give when mixed with royal blue), but they're super inefficient and don't blend with blue and red as well as a broad-spectrum green like lime does, and that's why lime is so important, but it cannot supersede white, as it contains essentially zero red spectrum, which is necessary for non-fluorescent coloration.

 

The goal really isn't to get more 'sunlight-like', that we are in agreement of. I have always run my tanks VERY white, as I keep non-fluorescent stock primarily, however even in doing that, my spectral output looks nothing like sunlight even at 10m depth.

 

 

 

 

 

What I don't understand is why an LED lit tank that has high output would need additional food in the water for corals to keep up with and a tank lit by anything else with similarly high output would not. One common thing I found with some of the insane big SPS tanks running 400w metal halides is that they're all feeding buckets and have insane filtration, so they are in the same boat, it's not just LED lit tanks.

[markalot]

Here is a tank grown under just plain blue/white LED's, as if to prove I'm wrong.

 

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2218686

 

I've saved a ton of these threads but I can't remember his husbandry so re-reading now.

[markalot]

 

 

What I don't understand is why an LED lit tank that has high output would need additional food in the water for corals to keep up with and a tank lit by anything else with similarly high output would not. One common thing I found with some of the insane big SPS tanks running 400w metal halides is that they're all feeding buckets and have insane filtration, so they are in the same boat, it's not just LED lit tanks.

 

 

I didn't quote it but I think the reason the Radium is so successful is that even to get the light levels visually bright the bulb is still putting mostly blue into the tank, and a crap ton of it.

 

I don't understand why LED can;t reproduce good reds, and I don;t think it's because or red lacking in the spectrum. You had said in the past cyan was key so it will be interesting when I get my quad and am all LED over the 40. I plan to run the cyan/blue channel the highest, followed by Lime and then royal blue, with whites and UV about equal way down under 25%.

 

As far as feeding goes, these guys and gals that run Halide lit tanks and fed heavily, that shouldn't have changed just switching lights. It may have been that coverage was the primary issue, the tank I linked above had coverage galore.

Here, this is what you can do with LED's if you do it right. He has since switched to hybrid because he wanted better colors (and whites that looked white, not the low CRI white LED can tend to produce) but I would kill for this tank.

 

Thread was linked above.

 

[Nano sapiens]

I remember reading a thread a while back in RC where white LEDs were going to be the cause of the next appocalypse (well, ok, not quite)

 

For what it's worth, I use a 4:1 ratio of NW to WW (Cree XM-L2) in my DIY LED array. For a few months I ran ~45% 'White' and ~55% 'Blue/Violet' (with a small amount of supplemental Lime and Red on separate channels). During this time I established a baseline Kalk usage. Fast forward a few months and without any other significant changes (other than the seasons) I'm now running ~40% less White and ~20% more Blue/Violet...Kalk usage has more than trippled along with increased coral growth.

 

The takeaway for me isn't that Whites are 'bad', per se, but that the ratio of White to Blue (and Violet, if used) is important and can make a big difference in how coral reacts.