LED Dimmer Setting

qwertymo13

qwertymo13

Member
Hello all!

I have a questions for the reefers with LEDs only tanks. What should my Neutral White and Royal Blue percentage be set at for coloration of my SPS and Zoanthids? Mine is currently set at 70% RB, and 30% Neutral White. I am getting great growth on both my SPS and Zoanthids, but it's losing the coloring. I am seeing that the green skirts on my God of War are fading into a dull green/brown, and my SPS are starting to lose their color from when I first got them. Any suggestions and help would be greatly appreciated.
 
It kind of sounds like your corals are starting to bleach. How long have you had your lights and when did you add the corals? Don't forget that you do have the intensity for the blue set to 70.
 
It depends on alot of things like the kind of leds how high u have off the water what optics u running how many watts the leds r. Best way is find somebody with a par meter to take readings. Good luck im actually able to run both channels on mine at 100% but i did alot of changes to my fixtures
 
I was just talking to a friend about coral going green/brown for a while. IME, it's just an acclamation period the coral are going through from where they came to where your tank is. Sometimes it's a water quality issue, but if coral is just losing its vibrance, give it time to adjust to your system. I run 100% on blues and 50% on whites at peak, and color is on point with sps and znps. A little patience goes a long way :)
 
I have a Biocube 14. The LED that I have is a retrofit kit from Steve's LED. It replaces the stock PC lights and mounts right onto the hood, so I guess it's considered hanging low. It's a 42W system with 9 Luxeon E3 3W Neutral White (5000K) and 5 Luxeon E3 3W Royal Blue.

The water parameters have all been tested and are stable.

Most of the corals are relatively new at maybe less than a month, so it could very well be an adjustment period. How long does it take for a coral to adjust and will it regain its color? The SPS are placed near the top of the tank, while the zoa are placed on the bottom. I'm wondering if the dinmer percentages are too intense. Also, what brings out the color of a coral, blue or white?

Sorry for the slew of questions, I'm still a newbie at this thing...
 
Just for reference. I'm running a RapidLed retrofit on my bc14 and I have my led's at 30%. Remember those leds are like an inch above the water.

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk
 
It's pretty normal for some coral to lose color under new lighting. Just keep the LEDs dimmed low and slowly increase a little each time. I have the same lighting, and they're really bright.
 
I was told that RB are not as intense as the white and that it can be turned all the way up, is that true? Right now I'm at 70% RB, and 40% white. Should I dim the RB even more?
 
qwertymo13 said:
I was told that RB are not as intense as the white and that it can be turned all the way up, is that true? Right now I'm at 70% RB, and 40% white. Should I dim the RB even more?
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The thing with LEDs is even the blues still give off a lot of light, I believe. I would lower your white to maybe 20% and the blues to like 45% for a couple weeks, and see how it goes from there. I bleached out an SPS in like a week because my LEDs were too powerful, and those are 8 inches above the water on a 75g tank. They can be deceptively powerful.
 
qwertymo13 said:
Sorry for the slew of questions, I'm still a newbie at this thing...
Click to expand...

This is exactly what the forum is intended for, so don't be sorry. We'll all bring our experiences to the table and try to help you on your way to becoming less of a newb :)
 
Rb give lot of par still and from what ive read corals r able to use more of the light emmited from leds then any other lights thats the reason a 120w led fixture can replace a 250w halide . Again just stuff i read before i jumped into leds. Before i switch out alot of bulbs my fixtures were just blue and white and to match my par readings of 8 ati t5 bulbs i had blue at 100% and whites at 40% . I was able to raise little bit at a time so not to shock corals but they do adapt. Again though ever tank set up is different depending on height off the water type of fixture optics etc. U can lower and raise little week by week if u cant get a par reading . A par reading will help greatly in letting u know if to much or to little light though. From my experiances with helping buddies every tank is different one inch can change a reading of 250 par to 300+ par same with different leds that different companies use in their fixtures u add optics and u can double that or even more depending on optics. I got rid of alot of whites added reds and blues and 6500k and now can have both channels at 100% and get good par readings and color without bleaching. Ive also noticed with the more blue i get way better colors out my corals. So imo u can try to run at same as aomebody else but u may not get same results again jmo
 
I do something like this:

Blues start ramping up at 8am and hit 100% from about 4pm until 8pm. Then they ramp down and go to moonlights at midnight and completely off at 2am.

Whites start ramping up at 10am and hit 80% at 5pm until 7pm. Then they ramp down an go completely off at 11pm.

I've seen no bleaching but my lights are about 10" above the water and my tank is 30" deep. Most of my corals are at least a foot below the surface.
 
Thank you everyone for your inputs. From what I've read from you guys so far, it seems that the best action right now is to get a PAR reading first before I start messing with the settings. Do any of you guys have a PAR meter I could borrow for a few hours? I don't have much of any frags to repay, but I can certainly pay a little for the rental?
 
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