LED Colour choice

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Victoss

Victoss

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Most people will find their fine with just blue and white so you'll never go wrong with that but once and a while you can find a complaint about how dull LEDs may look compared to say T5s, so adding extra colours just helps with the overall look and possibly the colours and pigments of corals. I know I first set up just royal blue, white and uv on my biocube and now I'm looking to add some reds/cyans to give it the extra kick my display has. So if your looking for a sure thing, blue and white will always work and if you feel like experimenting you can always add more later and I definitely agree on having at least 2:1 or maybe even 3:1.
 
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Seggsy

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Windsor, Ontario
I think this is what I will try (if they can find cyan leds)

LED_zps3dee9114.png
 
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jones02

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I been lookingn into ordering from rapid also and getting

4 red xp-e
8 violet uv
4 green xp-e
34 royal blue xt-e
22 cool white xp-g

On 2 6x20 heatsinks for my 90g. There kit just doesn't seem like enough leds to me? But maybe this would also be to many. Any ideas?
 
Salty Cracker

Salty Cracker

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Your blues and whites are going to do most of the gruntwork.  Yesterday I went from 96 to 108 on my 125 tank.  I added in 2 red, and 6 'blue' 2 cool whites and 2 royal blues to my white/RB mix.  I would have added some UV in hindsight.  I'm trying to target light some areas, like the strips below the top reinforcement bars, they leave a bit of a shadow.  Also I can't imagine adding in a bit more colour spectrums can hurt.

The 'lenses' definitely make a difference.  If you have a deeper tank, you'll likely need them.  They really push the light downwards, but offers less spread if your fixture is near the tank. 

Lastly, my lights aren't too close to the water surface because I didn't want to put it through plexi panels.  I have an anti-oxidant goo on most of the contacts and screws.  So far no real oxidation or salt creep.
 
Victoss

Victoss

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Seggysy I would advise against doing a cyan (also know as green or turquoise) without a red beside it. The cyans have a strong impact on the colour of the tank so what is generally done is to mix it with a red and blue to give it a more of a white colour. An example would be the Ocean Coral White LED offered by LEDGroupBuy http://www.ledgroupbuy.com/ocean-coral-white/. I eneded up with RapidLED and just have 3 separate deep red, cyan and 'blue' LEDs beside each other (still turned out slightly green) but this brings up another point too, when using several colours you want to try to place them closely together to avoid seeing 'disco' or colours on the sand/rock.

Here's a little more information on turquoise: http://www.ledgroupbuy.com/turquoise-495nm/

And also a great place for examples and information on full spectrum builds such as these is this thread on nano-reef: http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=294733
It's where I got my original ideas from and some help on the layout.

(^^^ It's why I was saying I would of wanted more blue in my build. I have a 3:1 royal blue to neutral white ratio but the red and cyan will really bring down the spectrum just like whites.)
 
Victoss

Victoss

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jones02 I'm running 48 LEDs on 2 6x20 heatsinks over a 4ft 55 and my sps are happy but I'm not using optics. When I upgrade I would probably consider putting them on (I have 80*) or maybe getting some more LEDs like your looking into but this is just pure speculation as I have never done any PAR tests. To give you an idea of what 48 would look like on the heatsinks here's a pic. I have them placed a little more closely then the normal rows layout because I have the mix of colours but a cluster of 12 would fit between the 2 already on each heatsink.

img0465sj.jpg
 
Victoss

Victoss

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RapidLEDs royal blue cree is 450-465nm and their blue is 465-485nm but the blue is the lesser used one. I would say your right in the range and should be fine.
 
Victoss

Victoss

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I like option 2 a little better just because I know on mine I wouldn't want more then 4 red/cyan over my tank BUT I only have 48 LEDs in total, one of your units has more LEDs then my entire fixture. So keeping that in mind I guess option 1 would work better for you because it's similar to doubling what I had. Although working with your scale I can't be too sure what colours you may end up with.

Another big part in planning it is what drivers each LED will go on, for example in my build I had the red, cyan and 'blue' all on one driver together because of the current limitations some of the colours had. One of my drivers has 8 uv and 4 royal blue but it had to be run at 600mA for the uv now making those blues less then half as bright as they could be (1300mA) but was needed to be done because as you can see in my first post 2 drivers are already at max and the other 2 have uv and the other colours. Just some more stuff to consider.
 
teebone110

teebone110

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It will be tough to determine the overall colour output until its all wired together.

As already mentioned, be careful with the red leds, these may not provide the colour your looking for or red spotlighting.

Make sure you order extra royal blue leds, so you can replace the colour choices with these if you are not happy with your pre-selected mix.
 
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jones02

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Petercar link said:
Gt a al sol color VEGA ...done
Click to expand...

Littly different in price, 500 each plus tax plus hanging kit annd controller. Looking at 13-1400 compared to 300.
 
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