Crazy brilliant colors! (1 Viewer)

[capman]

OK, so this is nothing new for most of you who have been using LEDs for some time, and I've seen tanks lit with LEDs before of course, but yesterday I tried out an LED fixture I got from Wardda on the 40 breeder in the lab, where I have not had any supplemental blue previously (it has had a 400W metal halide over it).

The colors were amazing, and somewhat different from what one gets, say with VHO actinics. (Interestingly, though,my pipe organ coral that is absolutely BRILLIANT green with VHO actinics was not as bright with the LEDs, so this seems to vary from coral to coral).

The first photo was with all LEDs on (white, blue, violet). The other photos are with just the blue and violet. WOW!

EDIT
Oops, need to figure out how to get the photos to upload properly.... didn't work. Stay tuned.

Oops, seems the files are too big. I'll deal with this later.

 

[capman]

OK, here are some photos:

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[Travis Dragan]

Stunning pictures, the colors from LED's are amazing.

 

[Fisherman7]

BEAUTIFUL! Do you have any fish in that tank?

 

[capman]

Indeed, there are fish:

3 yellow clown gobies
a pair of black ocellaris clowns (very young)
3 green chromis
a six-line wrasse
two yellowtail blue damsels
a yellow watchman goby
a marine betta (that one basically never sees)
a lawnmower blenny

Also, misc emerald crabs, hermit crabs, and a cleaner shrimp

It is a 40 breeder

 

[WadePW]

Those pictures are amazing! Can I ask what light your running over the tank now?

 

[JDMREEF]

very nice tank and corals. I love the LED look. may I ask details on your 40 breeder set up? drilled and sumped? ate you dosing anything?

 

[capman]

Those pictures are amazing! Can I ask what light your running over the tank now?

Currently (and for the past decade or so) the tank has had a 400W 10K XM metal halide over it, along with natural sunlight in the afternoons through the west window. This is the lighting that has produced the coral growth you see here.


Here though is the light that I had temporarily in place for these photos, and this is what I plan to be trying to get set up tomorrow as the permanent light over the tank: http://www.tcmas.org/v4/forums/show...amp-Heatsink-APEX-Ready-(Optional)&highlight=

See the attached image (from the page linked to above) of my new LED light unit that I got from Wardda (who built it originally for his tank, and then donated it recently for use on the lab tanks - very very nice of him!). I think Wardda said in his thread that that photo was taken with the LEDs all at 10%.

 

[capman]

very nice tank and corals. I love the LED look. may I ask details on your 40 breeder set up? drilled and sumped? ate you dosing anything?

Here are some threads on this system

http://www.tcmas.org/v4/forums/show...two-pumps-on-same-plumbing-using-check-valves

http://www.tcmas.org/v4/forums/show...-many-of-you-an-introduction)-to-my-lab-tanks
(regarding the photos of the anemone tank in this link: I added a "rainbow anemone" to that tank last spring, and it has been doing great, but it (and its clone - it split) has been wrecking havoc with the rose anemones I've had for so long. It is terrible, and that tank does not look like that now.)

I'm dosing calcium hydroxide (in the make-up water). Phosphate is climbing (0.5 ppm when last checked) - the zoanthids and many of the soft corals and some of the stony corals love the tank though. I'm hoping to have an ATS running on this system at some point, possibly before the year is out, and I think that will make it function much better.

We feed heavily (which I guess is a form of dosing, sort of).

 

[capman]

Regarding the color of LEDs:

I think there is actually something just a little odd about the colors here - sort of the same way I have tended to react to LED Christmas lights. They just seem off a bit from the general look I am accustomed to. And the look does not seem quite natural on the tank.

There is no doubt though that these LED lights do make the colors of the corals, zoanthids, and mushroom anemones really pop, in a way that I have not seen previously with other lighting. What is remarkable is not only how bright the fluorescence is with just the blues turned on, but also how brightly the fluorescence shows through even with the white lights on.

(Again, I realize this is not any sort of news to those of you who have already been using good quality LED aquarium lighting!)

Assuming I get this set up tomorrow, I don't think people are going to quite believe their eyes when they come into the lab next week!

 

[jlanger]

I think there is actually something just a little odd about the colors here - sort of the same way I have tended to react to LED Christmas lights. They just seem off a bit from the general look I am accustomed to.

I had the same thoughts when I initially switched over to LEDs.
My thoughts were that the LEDs seemed much more "crisp" of a light than conventional sources that we've been used to seeing. I don't know any of the particular sciences involved with the different sources of artificial lighting, but maybe the light waves emitted by a diode are just enough of a difference from a tube or filament that it makes our eyes see the light differently.
As we switch out different lights in lives (household bulbs, flashlights, automobiles,...), there seems to be an adjustment period as our eyes react to the new light.
Maybe LEDs produce a "cleaner/sterile" light with less "grain/dirt".
I'm sure science has the answer.

I don't think people are going to quite believe their eyes when they come into the lab next week!

Sounds like this would make for a quick study in people's perceptions as to what they see and think.
Ask them their first impressions of the new lighting and colors; and offer a guess as to why.

Very nice colors, BTW!
I really like the first pic when it's not oversaturated in blue.

 

[capman]

Indeed, I've gradually been coming around to accepting (and even liking) the look of LED Christmas lights, for example. Well, sort of.

I suspect the spectrum is narrower from, say, blue LED lights than from a blue colored incandescent (which surely has lots of wavelengths creeping through), and probably quite different from actinics. I don't really know.

This conversation though is making me realize a likely reason why some of the better LED aquarium lights have all the different colors they do (e.g. red and green, along with white and blue). I wonder whether these colors help to fill in the wavelengths, so to speak, possibly allowing a more natural look to be achieved?

Regarding how people will react when they see the tank with the new light: I think the biggest thing will be that they will be seeing the fluorescence of some of these corals and zoanthids really well for the very first time. Some of the fluorescence shines through even with just the metal halide, but only with a few of the corals. This will be a whole new experience that most students (and my cooworkers) had not even previously imagined.

 

[capman]

Finally got the new light set up yesterday. I took the VHO setup out of the long hood, cut a long rectangular hole in the top and covered it with a sheet of plexiglass, and set the LED fixture on top. I then moved this long hood to the right over the 40 breeder (spilling over to the tank to the left a bit), and moved the metal halide that had been over the 40 breeder to the left.

The LED heat sink needs a fan to not get too hot it turns out (I have a small portable fan from my office serving this purpose now - need to get something smaller I think).

I need to lower the metal halide I think, and there is sort of a gap in the lighting in the middle of the four tank lineup that I'd like to fill somehow, but otherwise things seem pretty good.

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[capman]

Sent from my XT1064 using Tapatalk[/QUOTE]

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[capman]

And I want to thank Wardda again for this really useful donation! This sort of thing has really helped us a lot over the years, helping to improve the learning opportunities for our students.

I've been sort of obsessing about how to get blue light over this 40 breeder for a while now (so students could see all the fluorescence), with a limited budget, and also the other tanks have not had enough light through the winter (when natural light through the window is much reduced). We are almost where we need to be now. Just need to fill in a little gap in the lighting between the 20 gallon tank with the Caulerpa and the 20 gallon tank with the red macroalgae, and we'll be in very good shape.

 

[capman]

So, after my first full day around the lab since I got the LED lights set up on Saturday...

I'm still amazed by the color (and students in lab were noticing the tank now who didn't pay attention to it before). And the color from the LEDs is looking less weird to me now.

But man, I REALLY like the look of metal halides on an aquarium, and I miss that with the LEDs. I miss the sparkle, which comes much closer to looking like natural sunlight than the light from the LEDs.

For the big tank in the new building (tentatively 6 ft x 3 ft footprint, depending on more final room details from the building architects), I'm really thinking that I'm going to want to put, say, two 400W metal halides over that, with some sort of LED fixture between them and at each end. We'll see.

(And I still want to see Kessils in operation sometime, especially in conjunction with more normal LED fixtures... seems there might be some great sparkle potential with the Kessils...)

It will be interesting to see how the corals grow with these new LEDs. The light level seems lower than with the metal halide I had over this tank.

 

[jlanger]

The light level seems lower than with the metal halide I had over this tank.

Be careful.
Even though it seems like the overall appearance isn't as bright as with the metal halides, the LEDs are powerful. Just think of an LED flashlight, the light doesn't appear as bright when broadcast into a room, but you definitely don't want to look directly into the light itself.
So, monitor your corals closely. I'd hate to see you melt those colorful zoanthids by turning up the LEDs too high.

 

[capman]

Thanks for the comments.

I'm really curious how light levels actually compare. Part of what is going on here is that the sparkle effect (glitter lines) from metal halides probably gives the impression of the light being brighter than it probably actually is overall.

However, the metal halide simply looks brighter to me overall.

(I do wonder though whether my eyes and brain are not adequately taking into account the large amount of blue light I have now. The blue LEDs are probably adding a lot of light that does not contribute to the overall feeling of brightness of the tank the same as the primarily white light of a metal halide does.)

I wish I had a decent light meter to do good comparisons with. I do have a cheap light meter, though I don't know whether it reads all wavelengths equivalently (e.g. the blue light).

The corals and zoanthids in that tank have been under a 400 w metal halide, and also have been getting direct afternoon sunlight (depending on a given colony's position in the tank). I doubt the LEDs are exceeding what they are used to (especially since sunlight through the window is diminishing both in duration and intensity), but I could certainly be wrong about that.

I'm keeping my eyes on things - we'll see how this goes!

 

[capman]

About the flashlight example: It seems that an LED is a much more concentrated light source than other lights we are familiar with, so looking at one directly might be bad for your eyes because so much light would be concentrated on one tiny spot on your retina. It seems that the overall amount of light would not necessarily have to be greater for there to be greater danger to your eyes.

LED lights certainly are cool. I will just need to do some more experimenting, measuring, and reading before I will feel I have a handle on how they compare in actual practice to other lights that I know well.

 

[Nickz]

It is almost amazing the amount of par leds put out while still looking like a dim light. I don't know about that diy fixture but most commercial fixtures can put out enough to easily hit 500+ par at a foot under water with the fixture 10"+ above the waterline. I know par isn't the same as pur but it is an affordable alternative measurement.

I can't speak for halides having never used them but when I went from 8 bulb t5ho to led I was surprised at how dim the lights looked at the same par readings around the tank which made it easy for me to understand how so many people cooked corals when switching to leds from a different light source. the fact they are likely more fine tuned to the spectrum for corals and more direct of a light beem probably help with the dimness to our eyes.