Milad's 72in LED build

[imisky]

hey Milad,

In theory 660nm should make the corals grow while 450-460nm (blue and royal blue) makes them color up and I've tested the concept with a custom built PAR 38 bulb, the result were far from pleasing.

The test was done in 1 system, where I had put a custom (5RB, 3CW, 1R) into the sump with adequate flow and movement and only limited the spot for corals to 6x6" with the PAR 38 hung above it at 6" so I'm getting a ton of PAR. The display uses PAR38 with 5RB and 4CW only. Since its the same setup the parameters are the same for the test and what I found was this.

Almost every SPS coral I put under the custom red PAR38 bulb had turned a brown color. There is a bit of color but majority of them lost that shine they had when they were under the none red LED. The test was started since last christmas and it is still going on today since i had a few times where I had gotten busy and the parameters were not optimal. But now that I have stablized the paramaters and my display is coloring up, the corals in the sump under the custom red PAR38 is still the same.

Which leads me to think that corals dont need as much red spectrum as we think they do. Infact from reading a few papers green spectrum seems to do more for corals then reds,and from my experience at 660nm everything just turns brown. Theres no point imo to bring in magenta colored multidie LED when in the end it'll turn all the SPS brown. Even if i was to cover up the red LED in that PAR38 bulb the result of the colors dont come back instantly, chances are they wont come back for a good 2-3weeks.