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WOW WOW WOW!!! How to make your corals POP with LEDs

34K views 47 replies 14 participants last post by  AzJohnny 
#1 ·
I can't show you guys the "with vs. without" results fully until somebody comes over with a DSLR camera, but I DIY'd a method to make my corals fluoresce brighter than you can possibly imagine.

I have had my 60w 50/50 white:blue fixture over my 20 gallon long SPS tank for a few months. I was very happy with it at first; in fact, I am still happy with it. The problem is that a 50/50 light left something to be desired for me personally. It seamed that when I got the corals to fluoresce, the tank was completely blue washed but when I got that natural daylight color I wanted, the corals just looked dull. There was no compromise so I just went on with a blue-washed tank.

I have been shopping around for a while to find a company willing to build me a pair of PAR38 LED bulbs to my specs for accent lighting over my tank in hopes to get more pop. The quotes were either astronomically priced or required me to buy a large quantity. I found one seller on ebay selling lights with a red and green added to the spectrum but they were 3w LEDs making them not exactly the "accent" lighting I was looking for, plus a single 3w red LED is probably overkill no matter which way you look at it being that the colors weren't independently dimmable. They were also almost all white and blue LEDs. So this is what I did:

I started with two of these:

Notice the difference optics in the center, that is because this is an "after" picture. Ignore that part as your lights will not have diffused optics if you order them. The lights were about $20 shipped each off of ebay.

I bought the lights before starting this project so that I could take them apart and figure out their construction. There are four phillips screw holding the front cover to the base. Under the base, there are 20mmx10mm optics just sitting on the LED bulbs:


Underneath the lenses you will find the LED bulbs themselves:

Each of these bulbs is a 1w LED as these are 15w bulbs. The bulbs you replace them with should be 1w as well unless you want to replace the power supply which you have access to by removing the three phillips screw on the back. I ordered 10 395nm UV bulbs, four 445nm blue and one 660nm red per bulb.

In order to put in the new bulbs, you first need to desolder the old bulbs:

I used a modified butane soldering iron because it gets hotter a lot faster and was less likely to burn the board. I stuck a razor blade under the LED and melted the solder to pull each terminal away one at a time.

I chose to install a ring of UV LED bulbs all of the way around the outside with the four blue bulbs and one red bulb in the middle:

Installing new LED bulbs on top of older solder required me to bend up the terminals on each bulb. I had to do this to keep the bottom of the bulb on the thermally conductive surface. Apply new thermal paste under each bulb.

I ordered a bunch of 60 degree optics for my LED bulbs and then 120 degree diffused optics for my red and blue bulbs:


After you stick your lenses on, place the front cover back on the bulb and test it out:

The UV bulbs are not as bright because our eyes can't see the color; however, a camera can. They do not show as bright in the picture because they are beyond the 60 degree angle of optics.

And check out the results:

Yes, I know that this picture looks very red. I ramped down my normal lights to about 15% for the whites and 25% for the blues to get any color at all other than blue to show in this picture. I need some DSLR shots to really show the difference.

The first thing that I noticed is that every single coral in the tank now fluoresces even with the normal lights on full blast. The reds, pinks and purples have gotten DEEP. The teals and greens have gotten so much brighter that one particular teal coral which you couldn't even see without looking for it is now the brightest and most eye-catching coral in the tank. The biggest shocker didn't even come from one of my coral. With only one of these lights done and hung over my tank, my yellowfin flasher wrasse swam under the light from the other side of the aquarium and began to glow and absolutely brilliant pink!!! My copperband butterfly followed him over and WOW, his stripes became an amazing orange!

So there you have it. Please, try this out for yourself! You will not be able to believe the results. The girlfriend and I sat there turning the light on and off over and over again looking at the changes. To be honest, its just bland without it now.

I will post before and after pictures with a DSLR sometime very soon. :dance:
 
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#3 ·
very nice. I guess I'm going to have to put up some pictures of my Acan prism leds.

LEDs
• 32 white
• 8 blue
• 9 royal blue
• 2 red
• 2 amber
• 2 green
• 2 cyan
• 6 magenta
 
#5 ·
Do you have any banding with the 120 optic on the red?
 
#7 ·
I'm starting to see a lot of other 3rd party LED makers including some green and reds in the mix now. I see why. That really does make a difference!

Wish I had the soldering skill/confidence. I've followed many of your DIY stuff and they all have turned out great for you!

Keep up the good work.
 
#8 ·
I'm starting to see a lot of other 3rd party LED makers including some green and reds in the mix now. I see why. That really does make a difference!

Wish I had the soldering skill/confidence. I've followed many of your DIY stuff and they all have turned out great for you!

Keep up the good work.
Have you looked into the solderless kits from Rapid?
 
#10 ·
I have checked those out. I was just commenting on this neat DIY and the fact I don't think I have the skills to solder well enough to do something like this :(

Looks pretty neat. Would love to do something like that for my 10g
Soldering is easy. I am not allowed to play the game of operation due to a risk of electrocution.
 
#11 ·
It's pretty funny how we were discussing this type of thing in one of my threads. I noticed Rapid has a wide range of different colors to choose from and I was asking about those but they're so new that no one really knows the benefits of them too well. Combine that with the problem Doc had with the banding and I am leaning more towards not including any special colors in my build. A nice DSLR shot of the tank so we can see what it looks like to our eyes rather than a camera will help.
 
#13 ·
The red banding is extremely minimal with the diffused optics. It doesn't bother me at all but it could easily go away by sandblasting the face of the lense on the red LEDs. This will lower the intensity but will turn all of the red into ambient light and do away with any color spotting in the shimmer. I will do mine to show you.

The great enhancement came from the UV LEDs. I see a lot of people include them and say that you can't even tell they are there. I don't think that they used enough of them. Turning it on and off with the normal lights on makes it look like I am turning on corals.
 
#15 ·
I'm getting my plans together to build my own LED fixture with parts from RapidLED and a total of 24 LED's. How many UV bulbs would you think to add to make any impact?

Also I heard that too much UV can actually be detrimintal to your corals. What do you think?
 
#16 ·
I'm getting my plans together to build my own LED fixture with parts from RapidLED and a total of 24 LED's. How many UV bulbs would you think to add to make any impact?

Also I heard that too much UV can actually be detrimintal to your corals. What do you think?
I saw a few articles on advancedaquarist that have shown real UV (lower than 400nm) is not good for corals. But if we're talking about 405nm leds, I have no idea how much is too much, these leds are inefficient, the cheaper ones put out four or five times less light than the blue leds (whether you see the light or not). Food for thoughts, in the ocean the 405nm region is about half the intensity of the blue region, and is penetrating very deep, so I'm thinking it can't be too bad to have a little.

But my current problem is how little PAR they produce and how many you need to have something visually interesting.
 
#17 ·
And that's what I was thinking. You would need to add quite a few of them to make any difference in visual effects and I would be worried that what I did add would harm the corals and give them a really bad sunburn.

Oh and I just noticed I hit 1,000 posts...
 
#18 ·
Not sure why they even make those bulbs but uv is not needed and dangerous to everything we keep. I always thought that uv was filtered out within a few inches of hitting the water surface, but then I heard a report that they have found fish with skin cancer that reside on the great barrier reef which is directly below the hole in the ozone layer. I think the report indicated that its the same type of cancer we get from to much exposure.
 
#22 ·
I chose the spectrum which I did because it is just outside ifthe visible light spectrum for humans. The ocean water does not filter this spectrum to the same extent that it does the more harmful UVB and UVC spectrums. I don't know that their is any relation between the exact cut off point of what light is visible to humans and cellular damage in corals. I do know that the human skin produces melanin to absorb UV rays but the level of absorption falls off drastically at the end of the UVA range and drops to almost nothing at the infrared spectrum. This drop off would signify to me that the spectrum is far less damaging the higher it gets. The spectrum I chose is present in nature so if it is damaging, corals have evolved a defense.

The ozone layer filters out 97% of UVC rays which are severely damaging. A hole in the ozone layer would of course allow this spectrum to pass and do cellular damage to fish.
 
#24 ·
I don't have time to read all of that right now, but in the AA article he was testing uvr which from what I gather is associated more with mercury, Mh and flourescent lighting. There seems to be some damage when the zooxanthellae are exposed to high amounts but recover in time. There is also the theory that corals can adapt or able to use there color as a type of sun screen to absorb the uvr. This is all very interesting, thanks for the articles.
 
#26 ·
This was the exposure amount and time.

The Montipora specimen was exposed to ~1,150 microwatts per square centimeter (μWcm 2 )

UV-A and 145 μWcm 2 UV-B for 4 hours. Temperature was monitored during this period, and, due to the lab's air conditioning, fell from 27.8º to 26.7ºC during the course of the 6 hour experiment.

Btw, I'm with you I like how the tank looks with the Leds.
I remember reading something that a company was going to start using uv emitters in there led fixture because of the lack of uv that Leds produce. I can't exactly remember why but it may have had something to do with either coloring or because Leds were thought to not grow coral. This was the only reason I even brought any of this up. Good discussion anyway.:thumbup:
 
#27 ·
I don't think that the study is applicable to the case if they were exposing it to any UVB or even narrower spectrums of UVA no matter the intensity or time.

I talking to people about building an LED light for my aquarium in 2007. There were plenty of people to tell me just how "incomplete" the spectrum was and how it could never work.
 
#28 ·
Wow! that sure looks pretty cool! i always wanted to put led lights on my tank too although i am still saving up for one. this is probably a great effect on the tank especially at night, as this may also serve as a lamp, how cool could that be especially that my tank is at my room so its quite a great effect too. i am very inspired by this post keep us updated!
 
#29 ·
I turn on my blues with the whites now and keep these on an hour before and after now. When just these lights are on, it's the most spectacular sight! The cool thing about using these as accent lighting is that you could even add them to metal halides, t5s, etc. just to get that extra effect.
 
#30 ·
I have been noticing color shifts in a lot of my corals running these lights only a couple days. The biggest shift has been in one of my acros which was all maroon before. In only a couple days, it has developed teal tips and the polyps look like they are shifting to blue while the body is starting to become more purple. This shift has taken place in only a couple days and has been incredibly noticeable! It's even noticeable when the accent lights are turned off; totally awesome!

I accomplished what I wanted with these lights which is getting that "pop" with the regular lights on but all of the added bonuses have been terrific. I will post some awful cell phone pictures tonight because I bought a new lens which shows the color a little better.
 
#34 ·
I know absolutely nothing about cameras so taking these pictures has taken a lot of trial and error but I am very much enjoying it. The camera is a used Cannon EOS Rebel XT (D300 I think?) with the original lens. I'm going to buy some better lenses and see if I can do better. Here are some more pictures I took now that the other lights are all on. The top pictures are with the accent lights on and the bottom pictures are with the accent lights off. I also snapped some shots of my fish to show how deep their colors have become with the accent lights.













 
#35 · (Edited)
I too am using the UV and RB mixed with I think 8,000K for a rather
14-15,000K look. 2UV, 2 RB 5 CW Bridgelux
a couple Cree lamps and a multi UV PAR lamp
The transition from MH and PC combo to LED was seamless.

I was using a reflector on my PAR lamps till I felt one.
I have them on my 20g, and did have on my 46.
LEDs as directional as they are, do not require a reflector.
The reflector builds the most possible heat and collects it there, that an LED fixture can produce shortening the lifespan of the diodes.

There's a video demonstrating the effect of 6 ch of lights into a RKL for sun rise/set using PAR lamps. The last channel had issues and I got that fig out since
that video post #205 http://www.thereeftank.com/forums/f6/japonicus-par38-led-canopy-build-184599-14.html
I documented the entire build, and for those who like me lack intricate soldering skills, or equipment, the ebay seller I got my PAR lamps from will customize with
either Bridgelux or CREE diodes in a few different wattages 3 sizes I think.
Then 20 posts later #225 I show the details of the PAR setup.
Minion, I wander why they can't mix Bridgelux and CREEs in the same
lamp, drivers is my guess, which means you couldn't use just any brand
of diodes in a PAR lamp, but resistance or load specific ones depending
on the drivers within the lamp you have. You could probably sell these
guys ya know. Your added light looks great!
 
#36 ·
I was actually following your build for a while, really cool! You definitely do not need a reflector though I do recommend trying a couple different wide optics in your lights to find the perfect combination which gets rid of the spotlight effect if you have it at all.

Who said that you can't mix cree and bridgelux? LEDs don't have a set resistance in a tradition sense but rather a forward biasing voltage. I think it would be fine as long as they were wired in series. Wiring in parallel on one power supply my fry the LEDs which turn on first.

I am considering building a few and selling them though I am not sure how many people would be willing to pay extra for UV. White/blue I could build for less than $30.
 
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