Adding LED's this week, have a question.

[Ratpack]

I have a 75 gallon tank that has had a 4 bulb T5 light over it for the last 6 weeks, it was 6 bulbs until two of them went out. The bulbs are ATI so I believe that is fairly high PAR. What I am adding is two of the DM155e's from Reef Radiance. They will be about 8" off the water. My question is should I start them out at the lowest possible setting or something higher? My photoperiod is about 10 hours right now from 10am to 8pm. Should this be reduced as well?

 

[reefle]

Start it low and see how your animals react. You can always raise it if needed. I just bought a lumentek 240 from them as well, so I'll probably be playing around with settings until everyone in my tank seems happy.

 

[Ratpack]

Lights are installed. Not sure if I was expecting too much or what, but they don't seem as bright as the T5's. Right now, blues are at 50% and whites are at 40%.

 

[DaveK]

Lights are installed. Not sure if I was expecting too much or what, but they don't seem as bright as the T5's. Right now, blues are at 50% and whites are at 40%.

No wonder it seems dim. You are using them at only about half power. Depending upon you corals, crank them up a bit. Keep in mind though, that LEDs tend to be a bit more directional than T5s. So you might be putting as much light into the tank, but less into the room.

 

[Willie McDaries]

I replaced two 250w halides with the two of the DM132e LEDs and to the human eye, they don't appear to be as bright, but a PAR meter will show you different...

with the LEDs, light is extremely more focused downward and it is a bit deceiving, that is why I think a lot of people burned their coral by trying to match intensity with their eyes....

you may also have notice a lot less light spilled out into your room

 

[Ratpack]

I replaced two 250w halides with the two of the DM132e LEDs and to the human eye, they don't appear to be as bright, but a PAR meter will show you different...

with the LEDs, light is extremely more focused downward and it is a bit deceiving, that is why I think a lot of people burned their coral by trying to match intensity with their eyes....

you may also have notice a lot less light spilled out into your room

Yeah, that may be it. Just seems dim in the room. Also, there are definitely dark spots under the ledges where I didn't notice them before. Guess it will take some getting used to.

 

[Ratpack]

No wonder it seems dim. You are using them at only about half power. Depending upon you corals, crank them up a bit. Keep in mind though, that LEDs tend to be a bit more directional than T5s. So you might be putting as much light into the tank, but less into the room.

I am afraid to crank them up too much to start with. They were under 4 T5 bulbs that were about 8 months old, so I figured I would start low for the first week or so.

 

[goma]

Since you don't have a PAR meter to make a comparison, starting at the lower end like you are doing is the right way to go. Every week or two increase them by 5% until you get where you want.

 

[Willie McDaries]

Yeah, that may be it. Just seems dim in the room. Also, there are definitely dark spots under the ledges where I didn't notice them before. Guess it will take some getting used to.

there will be a noticeable darker/shaded areas under your coral too because of the more directional output of LEDs, there's a lot less reflected light from the inside of the aquarium up to the under sides of the coral...

what I did to help with that some was to mount the lights a bit forward of the tank top and tilted them toward the back, you will still have the shading in the rear but when looking through the front of your tank it will be a bit less noticeable....

LEDs placed in tighter/closer bundles have a better blend of color but lack some in spreading out the light....something you could try is to remove some of the optics, (preferable the whites and colored, not the blue) so that the light is less focused and more spread out, removing the optics will however lower the PAR of those specific diodes.....

if you want to try that, contact Rick and he can tell you how or if you should try it because it might void your warranty

 

[Willie McDaries]

Since you don't have a PAR meter to make a comparison, starting at the lower end like you are doing is the right way to go. Every week or two increase them by 5% until you get where you want.

+1, definitely start out low and increase output very slowly, proper acclimation is extremely important with any light system

 

[Ratpack]

I guess I will just have to get used to it. And I am OK with the darker spots, just hope some of the shrooms that are there will now come out to get to the light.

Willie, do you have a FTS of your tank with the LED's?

 

[Willie McDaries]

I guess I will just have to get used to it. And I am OK with the darker spots, just hope some of the shrooms that are there will now come out to get to the light.

Willie, do you have a FTS of your tank with the LED's?

sure do, LEDs on the left, halides on the right...this was taken right after I hung 'em up before tilting 'em, so the shadowing is more noticeable, and sorry I didn't take any pics afterwards but moving 'em forward and tilting was a big improvement, plus there was less algae growth on the front glass

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my tank was almost 4 years old in that pic but it is down right now because we moved and it's gonna be a while before I can get it set back up but it will be a complete rebuild from scratch, I wanted to get rid of some aiptasia and blue clove polyps anyway but it is so depressing seeing how it was and looking at an empty tank now

 

[goma]

WOW, that's nice!!! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

[Willie McDaries]

WOW, that's nice!!! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

thank you kind sir I hope I can get it back to that point again, it's dry docked until I can build on a room at the new house, gonna be a while unfortunately

 

[DianaKay]

Great looking tank Willie! Best Wishes on getting it set up again, it will be exciting.
Hope you share your re-build when you get started.

 

[Willie McDaries]

Great looking tank Willie! Best Wishes on getting it set up again, it will be exciting.
Hope you share your re-build when you get started.

thank you Diana, I absolutely will, I've been gonna update my thread but it's just been too depressing even thinking about my tank right now, plus we've been busy with moving and we still don't have everything moved yet LOL with work and some minor remodeling here, just really haven't had time to do much else....I've been trying to keep up with everybody else on here though

 

[Willie McDaries]

I do have my 90g set up here but it looks terrible, I had to rush moving my critters and lost about everything, plus they went through 2 full days without power at the old house, my MP60 ran on battery back up all that time but unfortunately it wasn't enough, the temperature dropped below 70 in the tank so I assume that contributed a lot to the losses, all my fish but the pj cardinal and 6 line wrasse perished, all my SPS and chalices died, all but 1 branch of my frogspawn died that was 30 plus branches too, I still have some zoas and mushrooms and all my ricordea survived, and naturally, the blue cloves and GSP are doing great

as depressing as it has been I almost regret moving but the new home is a much nicer place and a lot bigger yard and I hate mowing LOL but I had to consider my family first here.....I will be back, hopefully better than before

 

[Ratpack]

sure do, LEDs on the left, halides on the right...this was taken right after I hung 'em up before tilting 'em, so the shadowing is more noticeable, and sorry I didn't take any pics afterwards but moving 'em forward and tilting was a big improvement, plus there was less algae growth on the front glass

[/URL][/IMG]

my tank was almost 4 years old in that pic but it is down right now because we moved and it's gonna be a while before I can get it set back up but it will be a complete rebuild from scratch, I wanted to get rid of some aiptasia and blue clove polyps anyway but it is so depressing seeing how it was and looking at an empty tank now

Great looking tank. Thanks for the photo and hope you are able to get it going soon. How was the coral growth in the dimmer areas such as the Cap in the corner? That is what I am mainly concerned with.

 

[Willie McDaries]

Great looking tank. Thanks for the photo and hope you are able to get it going soon. How was the coral growth in the dimmer areas such as the Cap in the corner? That is what I am mainly concerned with.

thank you, the cap in the corner and the green cap on the rear wall seemed a bit slower growing after changing to the LEDs...both the rear wall caps were still doing fine and still showing new growth...

something I noticed with the caps and all my SPS was the bigger they got, the faster they seemed to grow, the cap in the center of the tank exploded in growth the last few months before the move, there was an opening in the rock pile where it was at that was about 8" wide, the cap closed that gap pretty quickly