Lighting Supplement Suggestion

[Reefmedic79]

Not getting any help in the lighting forum, thought I'd try here.

Current Set-up:

Running 36 3W Cree LED's: 12 Neutral White, 12 Royal Blue and 12 Blue, without lenses. The blues are running at about 50% the whites around 30%, basically at a visually noticable 16,000-20,000K. I don't have my chart to inform of the amount of PAR I'm getting at the bottom, but per memory I should be getting anywhere from 250-350 at the bottom.

I get great greens, reds and oranges out of my corals, but the corals that are "supposed to be purple" (Digit, Cap and a encrusting monti) seem to brown out. They are growing great, they just lost their "sold as" color.

I've got a couple options that I'm looking for suggestions on.

1. I've 80 degree lenses that install on my current LED's.
a. Would increasing the intensity allow these corals to color up?

2. My LED rigs are completely modular, meaning any number of LED's can be removed and replaced by another color (i.e. Cyan, Red, Orange or UV) of LED. Each color being powered by it's own Meanwell 60-48p driver.
a. Does anyone have suggestions on the mix?

3. I've got room in the hood to put in 2 individual reflectors for T-5's.
a. Which color bulbs would you suggest?

4. Also willing to do any combination of the above, or all of the above.

[thegrun]

1. As far as the lenses go I would use a PAR meter to find your current PAR values and increase either your intensities or lower the lens angle if the numbers are low.
2. I noticed an improvement in my coral coloration when I switched from AI SOL Blues to AI Vegas. The difference from the SOL Blue to Vega would be what I would recommend for you. Basically I went from 8 White, 8 Blue, 8 Royal Blue to 4 White, 4 Royal Blue, 4 Blue, 4 Deep Blue, 2 Green, 2 Deep Red. Your mix would be 8 White, 8 Royal Blue, 8 Blue, 6 Deep Blue, 3 Green and 3 Deep Red.
3. I would stick with LEDs, change color by swaping out emmiters.

[Reefmedic79]

Thanks grun,

I've been looking around for Deep Blue emitters and can't seem to find them. Do you know what wavelength they emit at? Do you think these would be similar to a UV, if I can't find them for sale?