LED Aesthetics: What do you really think of your color?

[redfishsc]

But tell them about yor LED's and you will be instantly outcast as a know nothing noob.

 

Story of my life. I had a LFS not sell me an acro frag because my lighting wasn't sufficient enough.

 

 

Go to Dealextreme.com and buy one of those $35 Cree MCE flashlights.

 

 

Take it to that LFS.

 

Shine it directly into their eyes.

 

Point made.

[Machupicchu]

Iv built a few lights for people and they always seem unsure if they made a good choice right up until the point when you flip the blues on over their tank and they #### their pants. Iv thought about buying one of those flashlights and putting a royal blue in it so i have a portable sample of generally what their corals will look like. I bet i would get a lot more takers. I cant wait to see the reaction with the NWs though. I myself have not seen this combo with my own eyes yet.

 

Blaster, do you even run cool whites in your setup? I know you said the NW RB looks amazing with softies and LPS.

[blasterman]

7NW-5CW-9RB-3CB = 1 square foot.

 

Ratio sounds about right.

 

All the LFS stores in my area are complaining about a recent sales slump, and go figure. They're stuck in the stone ages and trying compensate for a drop in livestock sales by pimping gear sales instead. The one store that I brought my light in constantly tries to push people towards SPS when they don't want to do SPS, and never has a good selection of LPS or softies. That's because of the extra gear they can push to keep SPS happy - just took me awhile to figure that angle out. What they should be doing is talking to a manufacturer in Asia to make an economic line of their own LED fixtures based on some of the color combos here, and they might start selling other livestock as a result.

 

Cool Whites have been retired from my light and likely never to return.

[fishfanatic88]

i want to see one of those flashlights that is 1200 lumens!!!

[reef44@]

I think your right. It’s interesting about the SPS pushing though. On a personal note I have always avoided SPS. But I gave SPS a try in May after finishing this LED array. Now I find myself at the SPS tanks first at the LFS. Never even looked at them before. It’s a challenge I laugh at now, but I have had about 10 year gap in the hobby. 6 years before I gave the hobby up I remember asking the LFS clowns where I could purchase HO Phillips florescent actinic bulbs and getting deer in the head lights. It’s like dejavu! They had no clue what I was talking about and I mean no one in town. I missed the MH stuff. Started back in the hobby, found this site and went right for LED.

I Thank God for the Internet every day.

[MDreefer]

you should be thanking Al Gore... not God...

 

And I should have some information to add to this thread before too long, waiting for a few final components, but I will have a fixture with 3 NW, 4 RB, 1 10 watt 445 nm satistronics, 1 CB, and I have another NW to add if I think I need it. No optics, spaced very close together. Looking forward to seeing the results.

[reef44@]

Yea I did think about the Al Gore part, but I didnt want to stirr up any off topic debates.So I LEFT it out of this one. Al did a nice job though, my internet works well.

[ReggieF]

Captive Aquatics released an article on LED color that pretty much says EXACTLY what I had said before about the human eye color spectrum and how we can't see blue light as well as red and especially green. This article came out today and includes an image that's almost identical to the one I pasted in my sig

 

Does anyone on this forum work for the CA blog? I'm just curious if I had any influence on this article

[ReggieF]

Cool Whites have been retired from my light and likely never to return.

Cool whites are still stronger in blue though, so they are still better for corals right?

 

The graphs we've been comparing are mis-leading because they are normalized curves (all show a range from 0 to 1). A cool white should still produce more blue light than a neutral white, because the neutral white will have more energy lost in the red and green spectrum in comparison. This is why warm-whites aren't used to grow corals, because it doesn't have enough blue light?

[DaveFason]

Genj - I should have them in 2-3 weeks.

 

18 - NW

28 - RB

2 - B

 

-Dave

[Genj]

Genj - I should have them in 2-3 weeks.

 

18 - NW

28 - RB

2 - B

 

-Dave

 

all on a single 4" square? that's insane! I expect a detailed presentation on the forums! *grin*

[blasterman]

A cool white should still produce more blue light than a neutral white, because the neutral white will have more energy lost in the red and green spectrum in comparison

 

Correct. Cool whites have a much higher component of blue than neutrals or warms. It doesn't make a difference though because when you use neutrals you have to increase the amount of RB to compensate, and this more than makes up for the PAR difference.

 

Oh yeah...I noticed a parallel thread going on over at RC. I think it's cool some of you are doing the legwork back and forth, but the truth is that we're having the real discussion over here because of censorship over there.

[Machupicchu]

^^^^Precisely.

 

There like the reef tank illuminati over there.

[Trick]

so if you have an same number of CW and RB how much B and CYAN and NW should be added? maybe 4 of each for every twelve CW and Twelve RB?

 

also, where do the TV's sit in this equation? Don't they produce necessary UV light?

[ThatCollegeReefer]

Ok guys and gals,

 

I have been following this thread very closely, but am confused lol

I am going to be building a setup for a 10G.

 

Ok, so now a not so hypothetical situation: You have can have up to 12 LEDs and two dimmable 1A buckpucks. Concerns: you want your corals to maintain their color, Natural color is important, but basically you want the tank to pop, you want to avoid spotlighting and you cannot burn your house down.

 

Y'all throw so much out there that it is hard to follow at times Anyone care to give a couple opinions for color and quantity besides the 1:1 RB/CW standard? Any defenders of it?

 

Guess I am looking for something like: "6 Cyan, 3RB, 3NW = Windex"

[blasterman]

Summary:

 

RB/CW is fine with me, provided you are working with nothing higher than WG bins. We have a lot of tanks using DX bin Crees which tend to be a lot higher than 6000k, or chinese cool whites that are generating most of the complaints.

 

Still, using neutrals and increasing the ratio of royals is now my preferred light, and what a lot of us are talking about. If I were in charge of showing off LED technology to halide buffs and wanted to make a statement it's the combo I'd use. If you're running LPS or softies and want the color to stand out, my initial suggestion would be this combo. For an Acro / LPS tank you might prefer either combination.

 

Starting ratios for RB:NW are around 2:1. This is assuming you are using state of the art neutrals that can do at least 180lumens at 700mA and not Chinese variants. Newer Rebels, K2's or XPGs. Since neutral XPGs are the brightest I would suggest them first for full dimming options.

 

CBs are tricky, but they do unique things when mixed in correctly and they do pop colors that RB's won't. My suggestion would be to use a few of them mixed in with your RB ratio. 20-25% at most. If you are running fairly narrow optics this creates mixing issues, but you can always run them bare to get an even spread.

 

I haven't worked with TVs - I would assume they would be used in addition to everything else. If anybody disagrees with the above or wants to tweak jump in. Otherwise, I think that's about it.

[DaveFason]

blaster - Great stuff man. I am working on some really cool stuff and hope to have it for people on here soon.

 

People can also try XP-E NW instead of the XP-G to save a few bucks. I just picked up XP-E Q5 4CQ5 kit DE4 for just under 4 bucks each. If you go to the right people you can find the exact stuff you want.

 

I normally use rebels as I like the colors better but on this 300 LED build I wanted to use CREE only for more optic chooses.

 

-Dave

[redfishsc]

Dave, what is the tint bin of the XPG cool whites you had eons back (I bought 13 of them)?

 

I know they are cools.... but don't know the bin. I like their color and may need to get some more in the future.

 

 

My order of those satistronics cool whites and red 3w's shipped yesterday, we'll see what they look like (for a planted tank).

[Genj]

I got a fully functional, and mounted to the heat sink, spaghetti mess of wires tonight using all of my LEDs. I am going to be unable to post pics or clean up the wiring for a few days, but I'll have something for you guys to chew on next week.

 

I ended up with:

 

Channel 1 - 10RB and 2CB 300ma-1k

Channel 2 - 8CW and 4NW 300ma-1k

Channel 3 (it gets a bit crazy here due to power issues) - 2 NW, 4 TV, and 2 Cyan 150ma-475ma

[blasterman]

I forgot to add you can use a single Satistronics 10watt 445 next to a single high powered NW, and the result is very similiar to using two RB's. I'm running this now, and it looks fantastic.

 

Benefits are less wiring and fewer RB's to purchase. In theory, the 445s should be throwing more PAR than two RBs. Drawbacks are no optics and makes integrating CB's rather difficult. The 445's don't look as nice when used with CWs.

[ThatCollegeReefer]

Thanks a lot blasterman! Cliff notes for LEDs!

 

So something like this is what I will probably order Monday or so...

 

RB..CB..NW..RB

NW..RB..RB..NW

RB..NW..CB..RB

 

Think that will be an ok spread? I plan on having this close to the water with no optics. Also I looked for XPG NW and could only find CW. Where did you find NW? I only know of rapid LED and LED supply.

[Trick]

What will the TV's do theoretically? in terms of color

[DaveFason]

Thanks a lot blasterman! Cliff notes for LEDs!

 

So something like this is what I will probably order Monday or so...

 

RB..CB..NW..RB

NW..RB..RB..NW

RB..NW..CB..RB

 

Think that will be an ok spread? I plan on having this close to the water with no optics. Also I looked for XPG NW and could only find CW. Where did you find NW? I only know of rapid LED and LED supply.

 

Try putting one Blue in the middle with a larger optic. The blues can become VERY overpowering when being driven at high mA. Most places wont have XPG NW unless you ask for them. Try nanotuners or go direct with ETG. Problem with ETG is they have a $75 minimum.

 

-Dave

 

-Dave

[NebraskaDocs]

Completely agree about the Blue. If you put 2 Blues in that setup you're going to be seeing smurfs. 1 Blue should be about right. I incorporated 2 blues into my 25 LED setup and it is just about right. When I tried 3 blues...windex.

 

I'm running 9 RB, 2 Blues, 9 CW, and 5 NW and I'm very happy with the color. Much more "warm" and less purple than the traditional CW/RB setup.

[ThatCollegeReefer]

-Dave

 

You the man!