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LED Colors, And What They Are Used For


evilc66

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Great post!

 

Maybe add something about the new wave of high CRI white LED's and what sets those apart? For example 97 and 90 CRI white Vero's which are popular and are phosphor converted like all white's but add a red diode as well. And maybe the new Luxeon CoB white's which add a violet diode along with the blue and red.

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This must become a sticky! I was looking for this exact write up while I was changing led's but never found it (since it hadnt been done yet). Thanks for sharing!

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This must become a sticky! I was looking for this exact write up while I was changing led's but never found it (since it hadnt been done yet). Thanks for sharing!

++

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Thank you for the significant effort you have put in this writeup!

 

I would like to make a few additions. For over 3 years, we have been monitoring the LED experiences of thousands reef hobbyists all over the world, and our conclusions are as follows:

 

1. Wavelengths which provide best coloration of corals, are different, depending on species. Most usually, they are in the 400nm to 460nm range. For deep water SPS corals coloration the 400-430nm range is extremely important. In other words, violet LEDs are more beneficial for coloration than royal blue.

 

2. Lime and PC Amber are very important LEDs, but they cannot replace cyan and red. Cyan and red are also the very important colors with high visibility. Therefore these colors shall be controlled independently.

 

3. Deep red is not as important as the normal red (620-630nm), but it may help to emphasize "ruby" colors. Using too much deep red is not recommended though as it may promote an unwanted algae bloom in the tank.

Anyone, having seen PC Amber, red and deep red operated on separate channels, will never want to get rid of these.

 

As for the photosynthetic activity, there is little variation in the 400-700 nm range - at least for shallow and mid-water species. In this range, PAR for different wavelengths will not vary more than 30%. Although quite noticeable, this difference should not be playing a deciding role when designing a light fixture. Besides, chlorophyll absorption graphs, obtained in a petri dish, are not exactly correct when applied to a real-life system.

 

Last, but not least: with the conventional light sources, it was not particularly easy to provide too much light in our reef aquaria. With the advances of LED technology, now there is no problem in supplying virtually any amount of optical radiation into the tank. Therefore, we shall not think too much whether our corals will receive enough photons in any spectral range: we can always improve this by adding more light intensity. We should rather concentrate on light as a means to obtain the best coloration of your home reef, which would exactly suit your own eyes. Therefore, precise control is required for all spectral ranges.

 

On another note, whereas we are now capable of emitting sufficient short-wavelength radiation to provide for intensive coloration and fluorescence, we should bear in mind that this light is almost invisible to the eye. Therefore we should be able to control the amount of optical radiation emitted into the tank – otherwise we risk to burn the corals.

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DNK, some good points, and updates have been made. I'm not going to add anything about photosynthetic effect, as that wasn't the point of this particular post.

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great write-up evil!! people always ask what the different colors are for, now we have a place to point them to.. if this isn't already stickied, it should be.

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