Hybrid T5/LED advice needed

Dragonfish

Dragonfish

New member
I posted this over at nano reef but I can't get a straight answer out of them as they are all nanobox fanboys. Any advice?

Hi guys! I just finished setting up a 54 gallon corner tank and as you may know the lighting can be challenging on these. What I went with is 2 x 24 w T5HO with 1 blue+ and one ATI actinic, and 12 x 3w bridgelux LED's with 4 RB and 8 6500K (no optics yet). Overall, the color looks nice but I have two problems with it.



A. Not enough par. Mushrooms halfway up the tank are reaching

B. The colors don't pop. I have a green lobo and it just isn't as intense as it was in the old tank with just LEDs.



I already have a mix of spare LEDs to play with from warm white to 10K and extra royal blues to play around with. I also don't mind spending money. Remember space is tight! I can probably add some extra LEDs but not many, maybe 12 more tops. So ideas? Optics? Different mix of T5 bulbs? More RB?



Thanks in advance!
 
I would think to get the pop you are looking for, you may want to both add more royal blue leds and probably change the actinic bulb to another blue plus..... [MENTION=108]SkullV[/MENTION] could probably help with this...
 
I'm thinking I'm going to add 12 more LEDs on a dimmable driver and seperate my whites/blues. The heatsink is only 2" wide but 18" long so I can't really do clusters per say. Any thoughts on mix? I'd like to work in some lime as I hear it makes the tank look visually brighter.
 
Hey, so sorry I forgot about this thread after the whole flow thread yesterday. I'm going to go grab lunch now, I'll think about it while I'm there and get right back to you.
 
First off, what kind of coral do you want to keep in this tank? My recommendation would be to ditch the 2 bulb T5 and get a high quality 4 or 6 bulb t5 fixture. If the dimensions are 27/38/22 it should fit fine and you should be able to keep most anything you want with that alone. Since you already have LED stuff on hand, You could go with a 4 bulb and then build some supplemental lighting strips (primarily Royal Blue, Blue, and UV) to go on the outside of the fixture. This would be especially beneficial because you could build one longer fixture in front of the T5 and a shorter in back so you aren't wasting light.

The other option would be to build multiple seperate LED panels to fit on all sides of the 2 bulb fixture you have. As far as T5 bulbs, you probably want to run a Coral+ and a Blue+ in the 2 bulb and use a whole lot of Blue/RB and a little UV for LED supplementation. The ATI actinic you are running now gives you almost no useable light. If you want to stick with actinic get a Geissman Actinic+ which is halfway between an ATI Blue+ and an ATI Actinic. You shouldn't need an actinic T5 bulb with how much Royal Blue I would be running in your situation though.

With one coral+ and one Blue+ T5 you should need almost zero additional white light from the LEDs, certainly not any LED below the "cool white" range. Personally I would prefer the T5 route.
 
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OMG I'm sorry. It's not a fixture, it's a retro. The two reflectors are spaced about 3" apart and the LEDs are on a heatsink in the center of them. Actually I do have enough endcaps to run 4 T5HO and two Workhorse 3 ballasts. The problem is it's really tight in the hood and it seemed like a better use of space to use two T5s with LEDs. I'll take a picture tonight, that will help. I could maybe squeeze a third T5 in there and a workhorse 3 will run a single 24" T5. Also, remember it's a corner tank so the actual usable space in the center is about 24" x 16". There's room in the front but thats the part of the hood that flips up. There's room in the back but it's a tiny triangle.

As far as corals, it would be nice if I could keep anything. I've always wanted to try chalices and SPS but never had the light to support them.
 
I agree with the others. I would change out the actinic T-5 bulb and go with another Blue Plus. It will brighten up the tank and add more par.

I think the big thing to think about is what are you trying to achieve by using the both leds and the T-5's? I personally prefer the look of my white color light coming out of metal halide or T-5's. For Led's I think they do a great job of pulling out the blues and fluorescence. In you situation I would use the T-5's for the white color of light and use the LED's for the blue. I would probably go with a Blue Plus and a coral Plus or maybe an Giesmann aquablue bulb in the T-5 fixture and use all Royal Blues and a couple UV's in the LED's.
 
When you say UV, do you mean actual ultraviolet LEDs or the Violet ones?

Oh, and the reason I'm mixing the two was two fold:

A. I thought it would be good to get the best of both worlds.
B. Cost. The tank came with T5's when I bought it and I already had the LEDs on hand.
 
Dragonfish said:
When you say UV, do you mean actual ultraviolet LEDs or the Violet ones?

Oh, and the reason I'm mixing the two was two fold:

A. I thought it would be good to get the best of both worlds.
B. Cost. The tank came with T5's when I bought it and I already had the LEDs on hand.
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Hybrid is fine, no reason not to, and no reason not to run the LEDs in the configuration you have them at, but you will want to change the T5 bulbs from Actinic to either Coral+ or Blue+ (I would go with coral plus, its a fuller spectrum bulb) and then add a whole lot more Royal Blue/Blue/UV (403nm is really as close as you'll get) on either side of the T5 reflectors.
 
I'll go with the coral+. Can you recommend a starting point quantity for the RB/Blue/UV? I'll have 24 total LEDs in there.
 
24LED is going to be on the light side for a tank that size, but with 80/90° optics you can probably keep high light corals in the middle if you cluster the chips right.

I would run 11RB, 5B, 4UV, and 4CW. Put the RB and B on one driver maxed out at 1200mA and the CW and UV on another driver maxed out at 700mA. You never want to run violet/UV chips higher than 700mA and you'll want to dim the whites anyway most likely. The only reason I added them in there is just in case its too blue for you without them.
 
At that point you might as well get a Reefbreeders/Coral Compulsion/Evergrow panel and be done with it. That is a very interesting fixture though, very kessil-esque.
 
SkullV said:
At that point you might as well get a Reefbreeders/Coral Compulsion/Evergrow panel and be done with it. That is a very interesting fixture though, very kessil-esque.
Click to expand...

Personally in 2014 I prefer to avoid 3 watt bridgelux knockoffs for any build...They are dated, inconsistent and offer poor efficiency...

The Cree X series and Luxion are a much better bang for the buck.

The 420-460nm is your primary grow.

Whats your current PAR and what PAR do you want?

With quality LEDs and Optics. A mix of 45 LEDs driven at 700-1000mA offers the same 24"X30" coverage as a 400 watt MH.

YES

And only consuming 118 watts using dimmable drivers.

Lots of options and a bit more than watts per gallon or 3 watt LEDs...Whatever those are???

Bill
 
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