OCW with no white

[kaskiles]

Hi,

 

Is the neutral white, or any white, necessary with the OCW (blue, cyan,red) type led mixture? I was thinking to go with a mixture of royal blue, true violet and just substitute a OCW for the white all together. I figure someone out there must have the OCWs on a separate channel, and have viewed their system without the regular whites on.

 

Thanks.

[fishnlou]

I have played around with the OCW while the whites are dimmed off. My OCW have each color on separate channels so i can really fine tune things for a pretty interesting effect. I would not recommend it for your primary lighting. Im guessing corals probably wouldnt do all that great and when fine tuned to create white light the OCW in no way can replace white leds.

 

Now if your talking a fish only tank it would really make some colors on the fish stand out, but i would still through a few white leds into the fixture.

[MeepNand]

I would still use neutral white. Although I can't think offhand why it would be inherently damaging. I'll wait for Jedi's take on this.

[kaskiles]

Sorry, I think I didn't give enough details.

 

I wanted to make some led clusters/groups; 2 royal blue, 1 neutral white and 1 true violet. I was thinking to substitute the 1 neutral white for 1 OCW. My goal is moderate coral light intensity, and good visual color for viewing. I didn't know if I'd still need a neutral white to avoid the overpowering blue, or if the OCW would do that for me...

[MeepNand]

Sorry, I think I didn't give enough details.

 

I wanted to make some led clusters/groups; 2 royal blue, 1 neutral white and 1 true violet. I was thinking to substitute the 1 neutral white for 1 OCW. My goal is moderate coral light intensity, and good visual color for viewing. I didn't know if I'd still need a neutral white to avoid the overpowering blue, or if the OCW would do that for me...

Why? Too many OCW aren't going to do anything more than a few. Maybe try replacing 1/3 of the whites with OCW.

[lizardfish]

from the corals point of view rb/tv/ocw covers the photosynthesis spectrum only leaving out 620nm but that grows algae so its "ok" to leave it out.

but as far as color goes it will look washed out . cri will be too low. and it will look deceivingly dim . adding CW or NW will add green yellow orange and low end red.

so i would go 1st row: rb cw tv ocw rb ocw tv cw rb

second row: rb ocw tv cw rb cw tv ocw rb

hope the two rows line up in this post lol

[MeepNand]

from the corals point of view rb/tv/ocw covers the photosynthesis spectrum only leaving out 620nm but that grows algae so its "ok" to leave it out.

but as far as color goes it will look washed out . cri will be too low. and it will look deceivingly dim . adding CW or NW will add green yellow orange and low end red.

so i would go 1st row: rb cw tv ocw rb ocw tv cw rb

second row: rb ocw tv cw rb cw tv ocw rb

hope the two rows line up in this post lol

620nm doesn't grow algae as far as I know. Where did you get that from?

NW covers spectrum better than CW, so you can do this:

RB NW TV RB OCW RB TV NW RB

RB NW TV RB OCW RB TV NW RB

 

That will blend colors pretty well.

[jedimasterben]

620nm is the shoulder (a secondary peak) of chlorophyll b, so plants and some algaes have it, but it is nowhere near as high energy as the chlorophyll a shoulder at 660nm and its addition would not be helpful in lieu of 660nm.

 

I will reassure you that an LED array that doesn't include white LEDs won't look right to our eyes (all the OCW chips I have, from both LEDGroupBuy and using Luxeon Rebels all have a green hue from the cyan, if green is present in a light, that is the color our eyes "see" first, so-to-speak), in addition to not having the color rendition necessary to compete with halides or T5s, so it would be unwise over a tank full of colorful coral.

[lizardfish]

620nm doesn't grow algae as far as I know. Where did you get that from?

NW covers spectrum better than CW, so you can do this:

RB NW TV RB OCW RB TV NW RB

RB NW TV RB OCW RB TV NW RB

 

That will blend colors pretty well.

i read it on here (tho i dont believe everything i read on here) i read in some science papers last year when i was doing spectrum research that allot of pest algae and most cynobactiria species favor 590-640 nm light. then 1st hand and 2nd hand experience with 620nm leds growing cyno and once that spectrum was removed it died out. so i could be wrong but im personaly convinced

 

true but isn't the part of the spectrum they cover better is in the 550-680 nm range ? i personaly avoid that range only using enough for cri. which cw is enough to please me. each to there own i guess

[RK_tek]

I have RB, CW, NW, and OCW on my tank. If i run just RB and OCW, it looks greenish as Jedi said. I would highly recommend using a NW as well

[blasterman]

I'll flip the question around: why do I need OCW when i have neutral+RB+CB?

 

Ah...to sell more LED flavors...nevermind.

[kaskiles]

Ok, got it, OCW is too green without some white LEDs.

 

I was hoping to do four clusters of figure 3 (

http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/311998-full-spectrum-led-layouts/

) over a JBJ 28g, but I wanted to reduce the amount of LEDs in each cluster for cost.

The cluster arrangement would be like the reefbreeders nova A4, but I don't want to buy that fixture because I want LDD drivers running off my own Arduino controller.

 

So that's why I wanted to go down to one 3up OCW, 2 royal blue and one true violet per cluster; but I'm thinking I should stick to four of the figure 3 layout.

 

Thanks for the responses, I couldn't hit anything specific when googling "OCW with no NW"

 

Thanks Again!

[jedimasterben]

I'll flip the question around: why do I need OCW when i have neutral+RB+CB?

 

Ah...to sell more LED flavors...nevermind.

Most people aren't using a high-CRI neutral, so the red can help a bit, and you already know about blue and cyan in small quantities.

 

Ok, got it, OCW is too green without some white LEDs.

 

I was hoping to do four clusters of figure 3 (

http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/311998-full-spectrum-led-layouts/

) over a JBJ 28g, but I wanted to reduce the amount of LEDs in each cluster for cost.

The cluster arrangement would be like the reefbreeders nova A4, but I don't want to buy that fixture because I want LDD drivers running off my own Arduino controller.

 

So that's why I wanted to go down to one 3up OCW, 2 royal blue and one true violet per cluster; but I'm thinking I should stick to four of the figure 3 layout.

That's a rather extreme amount of light IMHO. I'd stick to around 4-6x NW, 8-12x RB, 2-3x CB, 2x Cy, and 8x HV (lower amounts for mixed reef, higher for SPS-dominant). Use a 4000K high-CRI chip for your NW and you don't need deep red.

[kaskiles]

So if I was trying to go with a minimum, I would maybe select 8 royal blue, 8 true violet, 4 warm white, 2 blue and 2 cyan? Or should I really have a mix of the white/blue and cyan in each cluster?

 

 

[kaskiles]

Here are some pictures of what I finally ended up with for this:

http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/347228-jbj28-diy-setup-questions-on-lime-and-lux-violet/