High Tide Aquatics

LED Q&A thread

trust me on this there is no right way to do LEDs yet... we are all still hoping our led choices will be the right choices

i have to admit my green slimer and all my monti caps love the leds and i have seen mor egrowth on them with my leds that i had with my t5s in the same amount of time...just my experience though
 
Tony, any thoughts on why more LED fixtures aren't utilizing a mix of Blue and Royal Blue Cree XR-E LEDs? The Royal Blue seems to be the standard along with the coolest white XP-G. Seems like the two blues would give a bit broader spectrum.

http://www.cree.com/products/pdf/XLamp7090XR-E.pdf
 
Matt I would agree to that but also say that there is probably a few different wave lengths that stimulate coloration. I've also been running my LEDs for some time now and while I love them (running blue lights only is a real treat) I have had color loss from my monti and a stylophora. My birdsnest is doing fine though. I would definitely say that running them at considerably lower amperage than people have written about on the forums is best. I was losing my monti to bleaching and demineralization until I cut back on my light output. My candycane is having an interesting time adjusting, i'm not sure if there is too much light or not enough of the wrong kind of light but the flesh on it has receded considerably since the transition into the new tank (hard to say how much is attributable to the LEDs). ZOAs love it and I love them under the lights, so amazing....
 
I am ordering two UV LED to add to my set. I already have two red and two pale blue mixed in an all blue set of 12 otherwise. So two red, two pale blue, two UV and six Royal. Then I have two sets of 12 with seven Royal and five white. I set up the LED sets in lines on the heat sink so I can cut them apart as needed to change the light with the all blue and red in the center.

Omid you have a multimeter that goes to 1000mA? Roberto helped me adjust one Saturday, but my meter cannot do it, and I looked for one today but no luck. I am looking to adjust three others.
 
I have been running all LED in my nano 29g too.
My setup is 2 strings of 12 Cree Q5.
Originally I had 12 cool whites and 12 royal blues. Had some issues with coloration and bleaching as many of you have experienced too.
I had bleaching on some acros right from the start. Some LPS that were too up high, were receding and after moved down, they got much better.
According to my observations, the bleaching and receding was from shock and not intensity. This is just what I have observed and nowhere near something that is concrete or something that you must do to your tank either, I have to add.
I originally thought it was too much light. I then decreased intensity since I have a dimming driver. Everything seemed to loose color and brown out.
I ran a pretty brown tank for a while until I was so depressed that I decided to start playing with different factors, including wavelength, intensity and exposure time.
I replaced 2 cool whites and 2 royal blues for 1 red, 1 green, 1 warm white and 1 UV.
After the change I have also found out that red bugs were messing with acros. So I started treatment.
I then increased intensity and exposure time, but I inverted the intensity that I had originally set. I had originally set more white than blue. I now run my blue string at 90% and white at 60%.
I started to see much better results.
I can say for sure and from experience that the color spectrun does affect the coloration.
I have a moni I got from JAR that I decided to do a little experiment.
It was totally brown and it still is. It was supposed to be fluorescent green.
Since I had placed all these new LEDs bunched up in the front of the tank, I broke a little frag from the monti and placed close to the new LEDs, while the original was towards the back.
Well, the little piece got its coloration back and the original is still brown.
Richard came by last weekend and saw it with his own eyes. That was when he decided to get his UV LEDs too.
So, according to my observations, I think mixing a lower wavelength then the royal blue is needed to get better excitation on the fluorescence of some corals.
I'm yet to do the same experiment on a superman monti that I have towards the back too. Its polyps are green, instead of red. :( Doing fine, growing and happy, but with different color than when I got it. They started red, then after a while to orange and now to green.
That's my experience so far with LEDs.
 
http://www.s-et.com/?gclid=CIy9nNnDtKICFR5ggwodw3Sr3g
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4334

Also, Cree used to make a UV LED a few years ago and it is still obtainable for about $10 each. I think the Cali Cree distributor has them.
 
depends on the optics and light height. To avoid spottyness, you want to keep they close together. However, this also greats a concentrated light system if you build a dense array. To minimize both effects, you can have a few spaced out, smaller arrays.
 
Mine alternate three and two across the heat sink. they are about 2 inches apart from others. There are three sets of 12 LED in sections on the heat sink to allow them to be cut apart if three separate lights are better than all together on one. The spot lights talk got me thinking to make my set up so it could be modular to allow them to be pointed at coral rather than the bath of a flat array.

I do not plan to fan cool, but we only have a few hot days each year in Berkeley. Those days I will turn them off for the day if needed. Some set ups are closer together than mine too. I am upgrading from PC so this should be way more light than I have had. I did not have to pack them on tight for punch therefor pushing the heat limit.
 
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