# Light quality and quantity discussion



## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

I have been meaning to start a thread about this for a while now. I recently purchased a couple of lights from Spectral Designs (these: https://spectraldesigns.com/products/16-x-12-led-20w-spotlight-panel). When I got them, I was a little bit disappointed because they were not as "bright" as some of the other lights have on other tanks (specifically, Jungle Hobbies and EVO Snakeyes Quads). To be fair, these lights are some of the brightest I have seen. I brought up my concerns with Kurt (of Spectral Designs) and he was very understanding but suggested that I give them a shot before passing judgment. I am really glad I did. I have had them for a little over three months now and they have made me rethink some things about lighting my tanks. 

Kurt mentioned that he had been talking to one of the big names in the hobby who, said Kurt, thinks that we are probably putting too much light over many of our tanks. I didn't get any details, but it got me to thinking and trying some things at my house. First, if Kurt and this other frog titan are correct, that is good news for me - my electric bill is too high as it is. If I can get as good (or better!) results from less wattage, that would be great. The tanks I have Kurt's lights on have managed to convince me that it is possible he is right  I am growing things well at the very bottom of these tanks that looked pretty scraggly before. I am also able to get some shinglers started from the bottom that I was having trouble with in the past (specifically, the Jungle Hobbies lights seemed unable to get those shinglers to start very easily). 

Emboldened by those results, I wanted to test if maybe throwing as much light as possible at a tank might be the wrong way to go. My second test had to do with my Snakeyes (SE) EVO Quad that I have on my 36x18x36. It has two switches - one of which only lights two of the 4 rows of lights available. I have had this switch set to 2 rows for about 2 months now and I think my plants are actually doing a little bit better over all. I think, without knowing it, that I might have been burning the stuff up high, close to the lights. The results have been, again, very favorable. My broms are still pretty red (though, to be fair, maybe not as red as with 4 rows lit). I am also still growing baby tears in a mat on the bottom of the tank, in spite of cutting the light in half. It has also made a difference in how much the tank dries out. 

These results are admittedly very anecdotal and my sample size is low. However, MAYBE what I am seeing is that I don't need quite as much light as I thought I did IF the quality of the light is good. Also, maybe there is a difference between throwing a bunch of light from a few powerful LED arrays and spreading the light out among numerous smaller LED arrays of varying color. This would explain quite a few things I have seen in the past. For one, maybe there is a reason that people have great success with Finnex lights, in spite of them not putting out the quantity of light that some other fixtures do. I tried one once but didn't like how dim it looked. Maybe I should have given it a longer trial before moving it along. 

Anyway, what I really want to know is what you guys think of these ideas. Do they ring true with your experience? I am only one frogger, but we can bulk the sample size up quite a bit if you share your experiences. I have no idea if I am right or not. I want to hear from you whether you agree or not. 

If you read this far, you win the patience award for the day 

Mark


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## gonzalez (Mar 28, 2018)

I'm gonna purchase a spectral designs to replace my evo quad on my 36x18x36 once I save up some money to do it. I'm all for experimentation and if I can still see frogs well than why not. 

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk


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## S2G (Jul 5, 2016)

I feel the same and think the hobby has gone crazy with lighting. I don't have a 36" depth to worry about, but I have cleaner growth with a slightly subdued lighting

I love the design of those lights


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## Kalle (May 14, 2010)

Interesting discussion!

I think it's pretty well proven fact that it doesn't matter how much light you throw at a plant, if it's in the wrong spectra for the chlorophyll to use it won't grow. 

For me anyway the challenge is to find the right balance between what looks good to the eye and what is beneficial for the plants. 

I don't know in detail what nm Spectral Design uses in their blend of leds other than what's stated on the webpage (6500K, 3500K, "red" and "blue"). To me zoning in what ratios between these colors provide the "optimal" mix is the real interesting question. 

Like having a recipe like:

% lumen 6500K
% lumen 3500K
% lumen red
% lumen blue
% lumen "?"

Not saying we should reverse engineer Spectral Designs product but it's pretty obvious that just using straight 6500K for instance is not the most efficient for plant growth. And the most efficient for plant growth is not the most natural looking and pleasing light to the eye. Finding that perfect balance is the challenge.


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## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

Encyclia said:


> Anyway, what I really want to know is what you guys think of these ideas. Do they ring true with your experience? I am only one frogger, but we can bulk the sample size up quite a bit if you share your experiences. I have no idea if I am right or not. I want to hear from you whether you agree or not.


Yes, I agree.

Plants need light of the right spectrum -- not only the right color temperature (e.g. 6500K), but actually the correct (or at least adequate) spectral distribution. That usually (depending on what type of chlorophyll is present; not so important in vascular plants which use chlorophyll A and B only) means peaks somewhere around 465nm and 665nm (blue and red). Kalle implied that knowing the spectral curves of the LEDs we use would help, and I agree. 

Our eyes are most sensitive to light around 550nm (greenish), so light that looks bright to us isn't necessarily 'bright' to plants; the light we see best is the light that most plants reflect best. This also means that (some? most? all?) lighting that is designed for simple illumination -- that is, cheap and bright -- isn't likely to optimize the spectra beneficial to photosynthesis. Probably, cheap eBay/Amazon lights are wasting a bunch of electricity, from the point of view of plant growth. Those lights are great for lighting a garage, though.

On top of the matter of useable spectrum differences between plants and eyes, it is understood that too much light actually decreases photosynthesis (photoinhibition). This might be an active disadvantage to cheap bright lights. I used to know the photoinhibition lux values for various species of reef corals (Dana Riddle did a bunch of studies in this area some years ago); I don't know what values are known for the sorts of plants that froggers grow, but I'd wager that those values are easy to exceed.

Possibly another advantage of something like Spectral Designs panels vs something like a Jungle Dawn or even a tubular lamp is the spread of the light. There's going to be more shading as the light approaches a point source, whereas SD lights pretty much cover the entire top of the display evenly. Certainly smart landscaping can minimize or even exploit shading to some degree, but it is a factor to consider. Many plants tend to grow upwards, and necessarily shade the older growth. There may even be some surface features of plants (leaf surface irregularities/textural features) that make distributed lighting more useful. Someone with knowledge of leaf structure could say more about whether this is a valid concern or not; it is just speculation on my part.

I don't have any comparative data to share, other than the fact that I started with Jungle Dawn lamps and switched over entirely to SD panels and my plants grow better after the switch. That could be due to a number of factors, and certainly "grow better" isn't very informative. Setting up side by side comparison tanks and journaling the plant growth would yield useful information, I think.


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

Great stuff, Folks. This is just the kind of discussion I was hoping for. 

Kalle and SM, you are spot on about the receptivity of chloroplasts to specific wavelengths of light. The response curves are very well-studied and known to scientists and hobbyists alike. Where the gray area is, in my opinion, that almost every light has _some_ light across most (all?) of the visible spectrum. It is always higher in some parts of the spectrum than others, but there is a little bit of everything in most lights (other than specialty lights that would usually be so ugly over a vivarium that we wouldn't be likely to use them). Most manufacturers try to skew the spectrum so that there are peaks around the two wavelengths known to be used by most plants for photosynthesis. However, I suspect it maybe a little bit more complicated than that, judging mostly by the wide variation I have seen in how happy my plants are under different lights. There are lots of factors that can shift the spectra of different lights. Almost all of us are putting lights over a combination of glass and screen. Maybe there is something about some lights that allows the right spectra to penetrate through the tops of our tanks. Maybe there is something about separating the different colors out into different arrays that makes them more able to penetrate both through the glass/screen and down deeper into the tank? I have no idea - just spit-ballin'.  If any of what I am saying is true, then maybe Kalle's idea of a recipe for different color arrays is more effective than trying to develop a single, full-spectrum LED array that has a favorable spectrum. For some reason, I think I like the aesthetics of a mixed group of differently-colored LEDs better than a bunch of white ones of the right color temperature. This assumes no disco effect, though...

I don't think many of us have the patience and background necessary to do full-on science experiments (I know I don't have the patience and the science is rusty!). However, we can get better at paying attention to our tanks and reporting differences we see. As I said at the outset, I started to pay attention because of the better starting of my shinglers down low. You can also tell when certain species are reaching for light. If you see the nodal spacing is really wide ("leggy"), it means the plants are probably under-lit. However, it isn't even that clear-cut. As someone pointed out in a thread recently, if their broms were nice and red, then the rest of the plants were bleaching out. If they back the light off for the other plants, your broms might not be the nice, red color you were shooting for.

I think this sort of discussion is valuable, though, because it may lead to us saving more money on electricity by getting better results with less wattage. 

Keep the comments coming!

Mark


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## gex23 (Apr 15, 2008)

A very interesting topic that i'll be following for sure - as i'm from a reefing background i'm somewhat OTT with my lighting but a slowly figuring out that while PAR / PUR figures are king for SPS tanks, they're detrimental to frog tanks.

One thing that I do think carries over though, is that while LEDs are king for strong intense light and controllability, the point source aspects make shading and coral placement tricky - so many are going for hybrid systems comprising T5 and LEDs.

This is what i'm using on my frog tanks now too, the LEDs give me great light output while the T5s fill on the shadows and voids as the light is far more diffusive.

Just some points for thought / discussion.


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## Kalle (May 14, 2010)

There are plenty of pure "grow lights" available that are optimized for plant growth. It looks super weird though and not something I'd like lighting up my vivarium..  So the question is how much white light has to be added until you reach something that looks ok. 

Borrowed image


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## gex23 (Apr 15, 2008)

You don't need grow lights to maximise plant growth or enhance reds.

Plus they look awful.

Making reds 'pop' and providing that warmth to greens is the one area that LEDs are lacking still imo.

A nice balance of K output is all that's needed, this is my former ATI sunpower T5 unit with 3 x 6500k, 1 x 4000k, 1 x 3500k and 1 x 2700k T5 bulbs running :

Planting 2 by DEAF N1NJA, on Flickr

Planting 3 by DEAF N1NJA, on Flickr

20180312_103613 by DEAF N1NJA, on Flickr


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## cam1941 (Jan 16, 2014)

Great post Mark, I would also like to add that a tank with as little light as possible that still provides the plants with what they need (spots lights for instance) will have multiple added benefits. 

One it will have a much more natural aesthetic and mimic a below the canopy habitat more closely.

Also, I find that my frogs are more shy in really bright lights. They tend to be much more active when my dusk and dawn lighting schemes kick in. After all, their needs should be the focus…

The final benefit for me is that if it slows the plants growth down a bit in terms of speed while still being happy and healthy, I wouldn’t mind it one bit. I’m at the point that plants that I thought grew so slowly when I started (ie. multiple types of marcgravia) are growing like weeds and can get annoying… Funny how things change. 



I've started shortening the photo period of all my tanks for all of the above reasons...


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## Kalle (May 14, 2010)

gex23 said:


> You don't need grow lights to maximise plant growth or enhance reds.
> 
> Plus they look awful.
> 
> ...


Yes they do look awful. But they do have peaks at the right spectra for the plants. The question for me is if you can counter the awful look by adding white daylight to the mix and in that case how much. 

Nice looking viv by the way!!


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

gex23 said:


> A very interesting topic that i'll be following for sure - as i'm from a reefing background i'm somewhat OTT with my lighting but a slowly figuring out that while PAR / PUR figures are king for SPS tanks, they're detrimental to frog tanks.
> 
> One thing that I do think carries over though, is that while LEDs are king for strong intense light and controllability, the point source aspects make shading and coral placement tricky - so many are going for hybrid systems comprising T5 and LEDs.
> 
> ...


Great points, gex. I have noticed that you favor t5 lighting in vivs. I do like some aspects of tubes, but others, I don't care for. If you have a natively cold environment all the time, the warmth of tubes is a benefit. I worry more about heat in the summer, though, for my setup so the added heat isn't welcome for me. Most important, though, I really, really don't like having to replace bulbs constantly to prevent spectrum shift (even though I know this happens in LEDs, too!). That can be a real expense (and it was with my planted tank). However, it's awesome being able to manufacture your own look/function based on different bulbs in different sockets. You can even control where in the tank each type of light goes. That is a great pro for tube lighting. It's just another piece of the puzzle in weighing pros and cons of different lighting solutions. Thanks for the alternate viewpoint and the background in reefing is super helpful to this discussion!

Mark


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

Kalle said:


> There are plenty of pure "grow lights" available that are optimized for plant growth. It looks super weird though and not something I'd like lighting up my vivarium..  So the question is how much white light has to be added until you reach something that looks ok.
> 
> Borrowed image


It was painful for me to even click the like button on that post, Kalle, because of how hideous that picture is  You are right, though, and that is exactly the kind of light I was talking about in my previous post. Too ugly for words, but effective. We have more to balance in our tanks than just pure growth efficiency. Good point.

Mark


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

Yep, the plants look great and seem super happy. It is certainly a viable alternative lighting approach to the common LED. 

Mark



gex23 said:


> You don't need grow lights to maximise plant growth or enhance reds.
> 
> Plus they look awful.
> 
> ...


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

Good points here, too, Cam. You guys are awesome 

1) Thanks for pointing out that most of our animals come from under-canopy environments. My recollection is that light in the understory of tropical canopies can be less than 10% of what it would be in full sun.

2) Also, it's important to factor in our frogs' comfort when we choose lighting. I don't like to look directly at any of my LEDs. I can't imagine that's easy on a poor froggy. Do they even have the eyelids or other ability to block light out if they are uncomfortable?

3) Plants can, indeed, grow too fast sometimes. I remember this especially in my planted tank. The constant need to trim is part of what made me convert my 90 to a viv. I am so happy I did...

4) Thanks for bringing up photoperiod. Yet another factor to balance. Maybe we could have brighter lights sometimes, but keep them on a shorter time. It reduces discomfort for frogs and also saves energy.

Good points, all.

Mark



cam1941 said:


> Great post Mark, I would also like to add that a tank with as little light as possible that still provides the plants with what they need (spots lights for instance) will have multiple added benefits.
> 
> One it will have a much more natural aesthetic and mimic a below the canopy habitat more closely.
> 
> ...


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## Woodswalker (Dec 26, 2014)

Last Tuesday the 9th was the date of a large horticultural lighting conference in the US, which is quite timely for this discussion. Just this morning, someone was kind enough to share the program with me, and in my first skim through, I saw something interesting. It's the summary of a presentation that was given by Dr. Will Chung, who holds a, "Master of Science degree and a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology," according to the program's description. This caught my attention:

"Optimal engineering of light spectrum enables faster growth, more harvests, and a higher quality of plants. Compared to conventional HPS and MH lights, LEDs allow us to have incredible design freedom. Previously, a combination of blue and red lights (that appears like pink or purple) has been predominantly used in horticulture, since plants have been known to absorb blue and red quite nicely, while other wavelengths such as green received little attention. However, many studies are showing that plants will benefit more from a wider range of spectrum, full spectrum, instead of two individual spectra. Now, LED grow light technology has started moving away from using specific bands of spectrum, and the horticulture industry is focusing more on using the full spectrum of white-based LEDs. During the presentation, several experimental results and case studies showing the advantages of full spectrum utilization will be discussed."


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## jarteta97 (Jun 13, 2014)

I'm using a snake-eyes quad as well over my 36" deep exo terra. When I first planted the tank, I had all four rows of lights on, and I found that, within a month, some of my lower down plants actually bleached out, and had much lighter colors than I was desiring. I switched to having only two of the rows of lights on and saw a definite improvement, but I still having difficulty getting a "green" look at the bottom of the tank - too many of the plants had a yellowish look to their leaves.

Recently, I placed a single layer of window screen over the top of the glass, below the light, with it still having only two rows of lights on. This has further improved the appearance and growth of the lights down below. At this point, I'm about to place a second layer of screen and see the effect it has. I had no idea that the snake eyes could have so much penetration and could be so bright that I had to be concerned about the plants at the bottom of the tank, but that's what it has come to. 

Part of it may have to do with my misting schedule - I plan on increasing the amount of water that the plants on the bottom and back of the tank receive, but I do believe that the lighting has had a large effect, because I have plants in more shaded regions that aren't suffering as much, while still receiving a similar amount of water. Ultimately, this is all tinkering that should have been done within a few months of planting, and I'm getting to it late, but I think it's still an interesting anecdote about how long term bright lighting can limit the typical mossy green growth that we expect from our tanks.

Edit: I should note that my broms have done very well, as might be expected under this high light, but my fireballs have still retained a distinctly red hue even after lowering the light and adding screen. I have some orchids in the upper reaches of the tank, and they have varied in their response, but most have hues associated with higher light exposure, such as purple leaves, etc.


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## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

cam1941 said:


> Also, I find that my frogs are more shy in really bright lights. They tend to be much more active when my dusk and dawn lighting schemes kick in. After all, their needs should be the focus…
> 
> 
> I've started shortening the photo period of all my tanks for all of the above reasons...


SD offers a ramping controller (https://spectraldesigns.com/products/digital-controller-five-light-output) that can implement a dim dusk and dawn period ramping during midday to higher (up to full) intensity. This would give the best mix of optimal plant light and some periods of comfort for the frogs. This kind of technology is old hat for reefkeepers, but I'm a pretty low tech guy so I've not used ramping lighting. Has anyone used this particular controller? I don't use a PC so I wouldn't be able to use anything but the stock settings; any input as to how adjustable this unit is out of the box?


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## LostIsle (Sep 19, 2018)

Socratic Monologue said:


> SD offers a ramping controller (https://spectraldesigns.com/products/digital-controller-five-light-output) that can implement a dim dusk and dawn period ramping during midday to higher (up to full) intensity. This would give the best mix of optimal plant light and some periods of comfort for the frogs. This kind of technology is old hat for reefkeepers, but I'm a pretty low tech guy so I've not used ramping lighting. Has anyone used this particular controller? I don't use a PC so I wouldn't be able to use anything but the stock settings; any input as to how adjustable this unit is out of the box?


I just purchased the controller you're talking about, will be setting it up over the weekend so I can post back here once I've got it. 

But I was messaging Kurt at SD quite a bit and he actually offered to pre program the controller for me and helped me set up a schedule for my fan as well. So if you're hesitant on the tech aspect just shoot him an email.


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## Kalle (May 14, 2010)

Woodswalker said:


> Last Tuesday the 9th was the date of a large horticultural lighting conference in the US, which is quite timely for this discussion. Just this morning, someone was kind enough to share the program with me, and in my first skim through, I saw something interesting. It's the summary of a presentation that was given by Dr. Will Chung, who holds a, "Master of Science degree and a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology," according to the program's description. This caught my attention:
> 
> 
> 
> "Optimal engineering of light spectrum enables faster growth, more harvests, and a higher quality of plants. Compared to conventional HPS and MH lights, LEDs allow us to have incredible design freedom. Previously, a combination of blue and red lights (that appears like pink or purple) has been predominantly used in horticulture, since plants have been known to absorb blue and red quite nicely, while other wavelengths such as green received little attention. However, many studies are showing that plants will benefit more from a wider range of spectrum, full spectrum, instead of two individual spectra. Now, LED grow light technology has started moving away from using specific bands of spectrum, and the horticulture industry is focusing more on using the full spectrum of white-based LEDs. During the presentation, several experimental results and case studies showing the advantages of full spectrum utilization will be discussed."




Very interesting that they are moving away from those hideous lights! 

Maybe adding daylight spectra to those kind of emitters is the way to go.


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## gex23 (Apr 15, 2008)

I'll post a more in depth response when I get chance, but this is the LED type i'm swapping to :










While the LEDs themselves are a harsh point source light, the opaque cover should give a nicely diffuse light output to stop startling the frogs so much.

Hoping to have these installed along with the T5s later this week so can give some more thoughts then


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## cam1941 (Jan 16, 2014)

Very cool and good to know... I've been looking for alternatives to my Jungle Hobbies lights which have all of the best features in that regard. 



I especially like how you can have dusk and dawn last for hours and not just 15min ramp changes like almost all of the other viv lights.



The funny thing is that on my second tank I created a low tech version using colored light filters and cheap party lighting LED's and it looks better to me than anything on the market including my Jungle Hobbies lights. I have it all set up with smart plugs which I can control on my phone. 










Socratic Monologue said:


> SD offers a ramping controller (https://spectraldesigns.com/products/digital-controller-five-light-output) that can implement a dim dusk and dawn period ramping during midday to higher (up to full) intensity. This would give the best mix of optimal plant light and some periods of comfort for the frogs. This kind of technology is old hat for reefkeepers, but I'm a pretty low tech guy so I've not used ramping lighting. Has anyone used this particular controller? I don't use a PC so I wouldn't be able to use anything but the stock settings; any input as to how adjustable this unit is out of the box?


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## jc_hammy (Apr 22, 2018)

Socratic Monologue said:


> SD offers a ramping controller (https://spectraldesigns.com/products/digital-controller-five-light-output) that can implement a dim dusk and dawn period ramping during midday to higher (up to full) intensity. This would give the best mix of optimal plant light and some periods of comfort for the frogs. This kind of technology is old hat for reefkeepers, but I'm a pretty low tech guy so I've not used ramping lighting. Has anyone used this particular controller? I don't use a PC so I wouldn't be able to use anything but the stock settings; any input as to how adjustable this unit is out of the box?


I have been using the SD controller with a 36" x 8" light on a 90 gal viv. Kurt set up the program and I plugged everything in. I haven't had much success with changing any of the programming, but its more lack of effort on my part. The system Kurt set up is working so well I haven't had to mess with it yet. The controller has five inputs, so essentially you could run five different lights with it, all with individual control capabilities. My 5th input is setup for fans, but again, with how things have been going, I haven't set any of that up yet.


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

Woodswalker said:


> Last Tuesday the 9th was the date of a large horticultural lighting conference in the US, which is quite timely for this discussion. Just this morning, someone was kind enough to share the program with me, and in my first skim through, I saw something interesting. It's the summary of a presentation that was given by Dr. Will Chung, who holds a, "Master of Science degree and a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology," according to the program's description. This caught my attention:
> 
> "Optimal engineering of light spectrum enables faster growth, more harvests, and a higher quality of plants. Compared to conventional HPS and MH lights, LEDs allow us to have incredible design freedom. Previously, a combination of blue and red lights (that appears like pink or purple) has been predominantly used in horticulture, since plants have been known to absorb blue and red quite nicely, while other wavelengths such as green received little attention. However, many studies are showing that plants will benefit more from a wider range of spectrum, full spectrum, instead of two individual spectra. Now, LED grow light technology has started moving away from using specific bands of spectrum, and the horticulture industry is focusing more on using the full spectrum of white-based LEDs. During the presentation, several experimental results and case studies showing the advantages of full spectrum utilization will be discussed."


Very interesting. So they are going back toward single white emitters  That makes sense to me. It's less risky to go with a "full spectrum" light in case you miss optimal spectral peaks. There is backup across the spectrum. I have always been distrustful of the term "full spectrum" because it can mean almost anything. It also makes sense that, after having mastered the technique of growing plants with the peaks you know work, you would go back in and try to tweak the full spectrum to incorporate what you have learned from the ugly lights 

Mark


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

gex23 said:


> I'll post a more in depth response when I get chance, but this is the LED type i'm swapping to :
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I am interested in how this works with the t5s. Are the LEDs going to add noticeable brightness when used with the bright t5s?

Mark


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## JimM (Oct 2, 2018)

Interesting discussion.
I use medium light over my planted tanks, as I find that's 'enough' and especially with a soil substrate, I get good plant growth so long as I moderately fertilize.

Then, I decide to go frogging, and see all these Jungle Dawn LED's, and figure it must be working, so that was my plan. (just posted in another thread to this effect) however I admit that I did think it was a bit odd...these animals, and many of the plants being from the under-story and all...so why the intense lighting? We're talking softie/SPS level reef lighting here, and darn close to SPS at times for under the canopy jungle plants. 

So...maybe this thread will have me changing my mind as to my light purchase on my 36x18x24 Exo build. 

I'm sitting right next to a planted tank that looks gorgeous with 2x24 watt T5's.


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## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

JimM said:


> ...I decide to go frogging, and see all these Jungle Dawn LED's, and figure it must be working, so that was my plan. (just posted in another thread to this effect) however I admit that I did think it was a bit odd...these animals, and many of the plants being from the under-story and all...so why the intense lighting? We're talking softie/SPS level reef lighting here, and darn close to SPS at times for under the canopy jungle plants.
> .


Well, I understand the concern, but it isn't quite comparable. The SD panels are <30 watts for an 18 x 18, and they are recommended to be run at less than 100% power. I'm not sure SPS would grow real well under less than 30w of LED in a 25g cube -- the equivalent of an AI Prime running at 50%

Also, not all the plants are understory inhabitants. The froggers' darlings, Neoregelia, are epiphytes that, judging from the _in situ_pics I can find, grow in full sun. 

Other plants, though, I agree need much less light. I just moved some cuttings of _Pellionia repens_ to some growout tanks that are basically in a dark corner, and the new growth is looking much nicer than they did in the display vivs.

Having dimmable lights really helps, especially if you're used to growing with less light.


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

I think "enough" is what we are after, at least for the purposes of this thread. In terms of the understory lighting, one thing that I remember reading, though, is that even though we are talking about far reduced light down there vs. at the top of the canopy, it is still quite a bit of light compared to what we put in our tanks. I just looked it up and full sun was listed as 98,000 lumens per square meter. I am not good enough at math to know how lumens per meter compares with the lumen ratings listed on artificial lights, but I think the Jungle Hobbies double at 14,000 lumens is probably the brightest I will have had experience with. I will treat that as above average- most of my tanks don't have this much light over them. When we figure in spread of an artificial light, it maybe that we are typically in the neighborhood of the amount of sunlight reaching the forest floor (2-5% according to a quick Google search). There is so much speculation in here... I guess my point is that even though it is relatively "dark" in the understory, it maybe lighter (or equivalent?) to what we put over our vivs. Maybe what we consider "intense" isn't quite as bright as we think? I could totally be wrong on any and all of this.

As SM says in the next post, it also varies greatly by species. Where does this leave us? I think we have to look at how our plants are growing and judge success based on a comparison of plant "happiness" vs. the watts we are putting in to the tank 

Mark



JimM said:


> Interesting discussion.
> I use medium light over my planted tanks, as I find that's 'enough' and especially with a soil substrate, I get good plant growth so long as I moderately fertilize.
> 
> Then, I decide to go frogging, and see all these Jungle Dawn LED's, and figure it must be working, so that was my plan. (just posted in another thread to this effect) however I admit that I did think it was a bit odd...these animals, and many of the plants being from the under-story and all...so why the intense lighting? We're talking softie/SPS level reef lighting here, and darn close to SPS at times for under the canopy jungle plants.
> ...


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## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

Encyclia said:


> I just looked it up and full sun was listed as 98,000 lumens per square meter. I am not good enough at math to know how lumens per meter compares with the lumen ratings listed on artificial lights, but I think the Jungle Hobbies double at 14,000 lumens is probably the brightest I will have had experience with.


Well, if that light goes on a viv with a 36" x 18" footprint -- very roughly 0.5 sq meter -- that's 28,000 lux (lumens per sq meter) at the top. It seems that generally, measurements of linear aquarium lights tend to be about 50% of original values at 18" down. So, about 14,000 lux at the substrate. And that's just some cheap Chinese... wait...*looks it up*... holy moley, that's 192 watts of LED! That's around three times the wattage Kurt puts in his panels (Spectral Designs). 



Encyclia said:


> plant "happiness"


The idea of 'plant happiness' makes me smile. Thanks.


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

Socratic Monologue said:


> Well, if that light goes on a viv with a 36" x 18" footprint -- very roughly 0.5 sq meter -- that's 28,000 lux (lumens per sq meter) at the top. It seems that generally, measurements of linear aquarium lights tend to be about 50% of original values at 18" down. So, about 14,000 lux at the substrate. And that's just some cheap Chinese... wait...*looks it up*... holy moley, that's 192 watts of LED! That's around three times the wattage Kurt puts in his panels (Spectral Designs).
> 
> 
> 
> The idea of 'plant happiness' makes me smile. Thanks.


Ummm, yeah. I traded for those lights  I have a single and a double and those are a big part of my thought process leading to this thread. They are super bright but not as effective at growing plants as I would have thought, given their power consumption. Also, the tank I have been watching that has one of these beasts is 36" deep, so it is actually less than the 14k lux at the substrate level. Kurt's lights seem to be at least similarly effective for me and use much less wattage. Hence, this thread


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## Kalle (May 14, 2010)

This whole grow light thing got me a little interested and I tried to just randomly check a few to see what they were made of, even if they look super ugly.

Seems like most have a ratio between red:blue of around 3:1 and some going even higher on the blue, almost to a 1:1 ratio. Most have some added IR and UV in a smaller amount. What those does to plants I'm not sure. Lastly most of them have some normal daylight 6500K emitters too but only a few. 

The ones I've seen with more detailed specifics have their reds divided in two ranges:
Deep red (660-670nm) and Red (620-630nm)
The blues of:
Deep blue and Royal blue (445 up tp 470nm)

Up until now my plans for my viv was to just go with some high powered 6500K lights. But now I'm kind of leaning towards trying to build a full top covering panel with smaller emitters and mix in a red+blue ratio to the 6500K. Exactly what the ratio between the violet and the white needs to be for it to look good I've no idea but with dimmers it should be pretty easy to experiment with. 

Having the red, blue, and white on three different channels there's also the possibility of playing around with pure aesthetic effects with a reddish sunset and dawn as well as a cool white blueish moonlight...


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## JimM (Oct 2, 2018)

Socratic Monologue said:


> Well, I understand the concern, but it isn't quite comparable. The SD panels are <30 watts for an 18 x 18, and they are recommended to be run at less than 100% power. I'm not sure SPS would grow real well under less than 30w of LED in a 25g cube -- the equivalent of an AI Prime running at 50%
> 
> Also, not all the plants are understory inhabitants. The froggers' darlings, Neoregelia, are epiphytes that, judging from the _in situ_pics I can find, grow in full sun.
> 
> ...


I meant to type softie/LPS.

I come from the HQI/mogul, metal halide days in reefing. I had 250 watt HQI's on my in-wall 150 reef. Oh the power bills...and the heat (back in CA days, in lovely Wa state now)
Anyway, I lack a point of reference for how much light a given wattage in LED's is by comparison. It's much different now. I have a little LED strip on my planted tank as a supplement to my T5's, but it's just a low wattage kicker.


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## JimM (Oct 2, 2018)

Encyclia said:


> I think "enough" is what we are after, at least for the purposes of this thread. In terms of the understory lighting, one thing that I remember reading, though, is that even though we are talking about far reduced light down there vs. at the top of the canopy, it is still quite a bit of light compared to what we put in our tanks. I just looked it up and full sun was listed as 98,000 lumens per square meter. I am not good enough at math to know how lumens per meter compares with the lumen ratings listed on artificial lights, but I think the Jungle Hobbies double at 14,000 lumens is probably the brightest I will have had experience with. I will treat that as above average- most of my tanks don't have this much light over them. When we figure in spread of an artificial light, it maybe that we are typically in the neighborhood of the amount of sunlight reaching the forest floor (2-5% according to a quick Google search). There is so much speculation in here... I guess my point is that even though it is relatively "dark" in the understory, it maybe lighter (or equivalent?) to what we put over our vivs. Maybe what we consider "intense" isn't quite as bright as we think? I could totally be wrong on any and all of this.
> 
> As SM says in the next post, it also varies greatly by species. Where does this leave us? I think we have to look at how our plants are growing and judge success based on a comparison of plant "happiness" vs. the watts we are putting in to the tank
> 
> Mark


Thanks...that all makes sense.
The other thing is, more light, faster growth, more nutrient uptake, more pruning. So what is the balance where everything is happy (some species might be growing faster, some slower) but nothing is short of that resource.

I'm still open to the 13 watt Jungle Dawns...I'm going to wait a bit though before pulling the trigger and see what other info kicks up.

I can always put them on there and add a layer or two of screen to diffuse it somewhat, and remove/add layers to adjust. Easier to diffuse it then add more light.

Are those Jungle Dawn LED's dimmable?


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

JimM said:


> Thanks...that all makes sense.
> The other thing is, more light, faster growth, more nutrient uptake, more pruning. So what is the balance where everything is happy (some species might be growing faster, some slower) but nothing is short of that resource.
> 
> I'm still open to the 13 watt Jungle Dawns...I'm going to wait a bit though before pulling the trigger and see what other info kicks up.
> ...


Actually, pruning is one of the things I miss the least after converting my last fish tank (planted tank) to a viv. I was a little weary of it, too, since I was over 30 years with a tank of some kind, so that was a factor  You can choose away from plants that need frequent pruning. I think I have to prune a tank maybe every 6 months because of the plants I tend to like in my vivs. I was at every month or two with the planted tank and if I didn't get it done in a timely fashion, the plants would shade each other out and kill each other... Lots more time to catch that sort of thing in the viv world 

Mark


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## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

JimM said:


> Are those Jungle Dawn LED's dimmable?


Nope. That's one of the big downsides to them, I think, along with the fact that if you have to buy them as well as buy some sort of hood, you're up in the price range of better lighting.


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## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

JimM said:


> I come from the HQI/mogul, metal halide days in reefing.


Ah, yes, when we put gymnasium lights on our fish tanks. I remember that. It was an advance over the beginning of the reef hobby -- the late, great, Robert P.L. Straughan (who wrote, "There's nothing better than a marine aquarium, unless it is two aquariums or perhaps a good-looking blonde") who in the 1950s would sun his corals in a goldfish bowl in his Florida backyard.


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## Kalle (May 14, 2010)

Found a nice article series on lighting for planted aquariums that I still think can be helpful if we skip water absorption of different wavelengths etc. 

OPTIMISING LIGHT & LIGHTING - THE 2HR AQUARIST'S GUIDE TO FINE-TUNING LIGHT IN THE PLANTED AQUARIUM

"_6500k indicates the rough color hue of a light, but has no direct bearing on whether it is a good bulb for plant growth or not. As mentioned above, It is the spectrum distribution of light that affects plant growth and photomorphogenesis, and you cannot tell the exact spectrum distribution of a light just by its K rating value. Every website out there that claims 6500K is better for plants is purely a marketing gimmick._"

"_White LEDs are essentially blue LEDs spiked with yellow phosphor to give additional wavelengths. All white LEDs have a typical blue spike, follow by a dip in Cyan and then a hump in yellow region; how large this hump is depends on how yellow tinted the white LED is designed to be. For many LEDs, the "yellow hump" is much smaller - meaning that many white LEDs contain very little red spectrum._"

"_Most commercial T5 fixtures, and almost all commercial LEDs come with a spectrum that I find to be deficient in red/blue. I prefer customised spectrum fixtures with 40-70% of the light being red/blue. This means changing out some T5 tubes in a T5 array for red/blue/pink tubes and using custom spectrum LED fixtures where I can choose which diodes go into the fixture. At the minimum, I would recommend 50% of the tubes in a T5 array to be changed to pink/red gro-tubes. (meaning 2/4 of a 4 tube T5 array)._"

Below is spectrum distribution for the sun (6500K) and a typical 6500K led light.


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## gex23 (Apr 15, 2008)

Encyclia said:


> I am interested in how this works with the t5s. Are the LEDs going to add noticeable brightness when used with the bright t5s?
> 
> Mark


Mark, I won't post the photos here but please find linked my build thread where I have attached photos with the various lights on.

https://www.dendroboard.com/forum/parts-construction/341009-24-18-24-exo-return.html#post3048668


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## JimM (Oct 2, 2018)

Encyclia has been kind enough to point out the Spectral Designs fixtures to me, and it plays well into that article you posted Kalle, with the red and blue diodes.

I'm now leaning toward this fixture for my 36x18x24 Exo build.

"Six custom spec black aluminum LED strips that combine white diodes running at 6500K and 3500k, as well as red and blue diodes mixed in for better plant growth"

https://spectraldesigns.com/products/34-x-10-led-light-strip-panel


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## kurtatwork (Oct 2, 2012)

Testing 1-2-3

Sorry, I gotta find out if DB is going to kick me to the curb again. I wrote a big long post and then got an error mesg that would not go away so I lost all that text. No wonder I almost never post and only read here.


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

kurtatwork said:


> Testing 1-2-3
> 
> Sorry, I gotta find out if DB is going to kick me to the curb again. I wrote a big long post and then got an error mesg that would not go away so I lost all that text. No wonder I almost never post and only read here.


That's a feature, not a bug.


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

Good information in here, too, Kalle. I think it's good news that this guy is advocating using a variety of hues. I think it's easier to cobble together a truer "full spectrum" light using this method than it is to have a single "white" diode that matches the solar spectrum. I am still thinking in terms of LEDs because I think they are a better all-around technology going forward. t5s are still probably better suited to this sort of spectrum overlap approach, but I think that gap is going to narrow and disappear over time. 

Thanks for posting this!

Mark



Kalle said:


> Found a nice article series on lighting for planted aquariums that I still think can be helpful if we skip water absorption of different wavelengths etc.
> 
> OPTIMISING LIGHT & LIGHTING - THE 2HR AQUARIST'S GUIDE TO FINE-TUNING LIGHT IN THE PLANTED AQUARIUM
> 
> ...


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

gex23 said:


> Mark, I won't post the photos here but please find linked my build thread where I have attached photos with the various lights on.
> 
> https://www.dendroboard.com/forum/parts-construction/341009-24-18-24-exo-return.html#post3048668


That's great information, gex. I wish I had the color vision acuity to see the differences in the pictures. I am sure it was much more obvious there in person. I am interested in whether you see a difference in behavior between when you have the t5s plus the battens lit vs. just the battens. I would be very interested to know whether I am likely stressing my frogs by having too much lighting on them.

Thanks for posting!

Mark


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## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

kurtatwork said:


> Testing 1-2-3
> 
> Sorry, I gotta find out if DB is going to kick me to the curb again. I wrote a big long post and then got an error mesg that would not go away so I lost all that text. No wonder I almost never post and only read here.


That's not good. Is there some sort of maximum text length in a post?

I think we'd all like you to post here, Kurt!


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## kurtatwork (Oct 2, 2012)

OK, finally making it back here. The cats have been playing behind my desk and disconnecting power cords for me (thats also a feature.), so no Net connection until I found the proper power cord for the router today. 

Thanks Mark for having the patience and willingness to try out my lights so you could see that they can and will grow plants well even when they might not appear bright enough.

I go through cycles where I prefer more or less light in my vivs. In general I prefer a softer more mellow light. I'd prefer to have too little than too much when it comes to overall presentation.

Red and blue diodes ...

I went in search of scientific literature about this after noticing how many "grow" lights were using red and blue. Obviously the weed industry has bought into it, as have the fresh water aquarium folks. The literature says that there's a range of both red and blue where most of the photosynthesis is taking place (google it, its not a trade secret). You can see the implementation of that on the weed lights that literally have no white diodes at all. Obviously thats a nonstarter for us, but we can certainly create blended solutions, which is what I've done.

"Full spectrum" ...

I'm not entirely sure what anyone means by this (and many people may not be either), but I'm going to assume that it would be a light that most closely mimics the light put out by our sun. I've tested diodes from China that claim to be "full spectrum". The light that was created was not usable. It was very ugly and sort of a pink/blue/purple kind of a nitemare.

The fact is the scientific literature shows that plants dont use or require a full spectrum approach. Its probably more for us humans than anything else, or possibly for the health of the animals (IF a full spectrum approach could also have a decent amount of UV).

UV light ...

Having LED diodes that produce usable amounts of UVB for reptiles is highly desirable for obvious reasons, but its a technology that is still prohibitively expensive. So I've created combo light panels that use the best available T5 blubs. You still have to have a screen vent right under the T5 fixture, so planning and design are critical. This option is available from the big companies, I'm just adding the benefit of having the light panel custom designed for a better fit for vivs that dont fit the current off the shelf products.

Digital control of your lights ...

To really take advantage of the lights I've designed I think this extra feature is important to have. The TC420 controller is a generic Chinese controller that allows anyone to program up to 5 channels of DC 12v output.

I've already created programs that should meet the needs of most everyone. I have solar cycles from 11 to 14 hours, with three different intensity profiles for you to choose from at each time cycle. There's a sunrise and sunset on them all. The difference in the three profiles is the time spent at 100% output. The "regular" one only has a midday peak of 2 hours at full power. Then comes the "X" profile at 4 hours, then the "XX" profile which spends 6 hours at full power.

If growing in a new viv, then the X or XX is probably best. For a mature viv, the "regular" or standard profile is more than enough in my experience. I have over 30 vivs here, ranging in size from 10gal up to a 90gal vert conversion thats 48" tall, with many custom sizes and designs, as well as the industry standard Exo's like the 18x18x24 (clearly the most popular one out there).

I recommend a 16"x12" panel for the 18x18x24. 

If you want or need more power for that, a large diode chip can be added. The large diodes are available in 10, 20, 30 and 50w increments. They have to be cooled by a heatsink and fan unit, which does add some mechanical complexity (which will eventually fail), as well as a small amount of white noise to your room. With the fan theres only a small amount of added heat to the overall running temp of the light. 

If a fan and heat sounds like a problem to you, I also incorporate MR16 style spotlight bulbs that run at 15w output.

In general my lights run as cool or cooler than any LED lights currently available for the glass box hobbies. That was a critical design point which caused me to pass on several possible manufacturers. Their strip prototypes would come in running too hot, so it was onto the next.

Because of lower heat emission than other lights, I've gotten a lot of business from the froggers in SoCal and AZ (thanks guys!). I have heat sensitive species here, so I know how important low heat lights are.

Anything else?

Just bring up a topic and lets kick it around. I'm always interested in new information or ways we might build a better mousetrap. 

I've avoided putting LUX readings, power ratings, PAR graphs, etc, on my lights because in my experience a lot of these ratings are contextual and don't necessarily lead to the best choices for both plants, animals and humans, but I am starting to relent and will probably do both power consumption and LUX/lumens in the near future.

Power consumption is definitely needed so we can gauge how many lights can fit on the controller/driver combo unit that I sell in my store. The downside of that watt rating is that people use it for comparison and they almost always choose more power over less, even when it's not an apples to apples comparison.

As Mark admitted, he had to see the results for himself to believe that "less is more" ... or that there's more to lighting than just wattage ratings and lumens.


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## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

kurtatwork said:


> The cats have been playing behind my desk and disconnecting power cords for me (thats also a feature.)






kurtatwork said:


> Having LED diodes that produce usable amounts of UVB for reptiles is highly desirable for obvious reasons, but its a technology that is still prohibitively expensive.


Kurt, you may not have the exact pricing at your fingertips, and likely it changes pretty rapidly, but I'm curious exactly how "prohibitively expensive" UVB diodes are. I'm losing my astonishment over how much people will easily spend on even even little pieces of their hobby. Maybe the masses couldn't be sold on UVB LEDs, but I don't get the impression that you're aiming at the mass market, exactly. What kind of dollars are we looking at?


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## SergeantDude (Feb 27, 2018)

I used to keep high-tech planted tanks, so I'm only comparing "aquarium" fixtures because thats what I have available. That said, I have noticed a massive differences when using different spectrums.

One Viv (18x18x18) is lit with a Current USA Satellite Plus Pro set to about 30% output. I had it running at somewhere near 6000k and growth was fantastic and some plants flowered but 
most plants got a little leggy and were really reaching for the light. On a whim, I shifted the spectrum a little closer to 1000. New growth was much more compact and the overall I think the plants looked healthier.

My other Viv (18x20x20) is lit with an AI Prime Freshwater. More vivarium people need to use this light. It's pretty expensive but penetration and customization is unmatched by all but the most expensive fixtures. Anyway, applying the knowledge I learned from the previous Viv, this fixture was set up to run the first hour at 5000k, then ramping up to 1000k over 5 hours, then back down over 5 hours, and 5000k for an hour again. So far I haven't found a single plant that doesn't LOVE this setup.


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## S2G (Jul 5, 2016)

I like the ease of the 24/7 6500, but at full bright everything looks washed out along with plants getting leggy. I stumbled on some marine full specs @10k & wow what a difference. First off viewing is such much more pleasant its not funny, but also plants are responding better. I ramp it up to full bright over 3 hrs right now.

Here's the general specs on the lights

SPECIFICATION: 

12”: 12 LEDs -720 lumen 8x 10000K, 1x Actinic, 1x pink, 1x Green 

20”: 24 LEDs - 1440 lumen 12x10000K, 8x Actinic, 2x pink, 2x Green

24”: 30 LEDs - 1800 lumen 17x10000K, 9x Actinic, 2x pink, 2x Green

30”: 36 LEDs - 2160 lumen 20x10000K, 12x Actinic, 2x pink, 2x Green

36”: 42 LEDs - 2520 lumen 21x10000K, 15x Actinic, 3x pink, 3x Green

48”: 60 LEDs - 3600 lumen 34x10000K, 18x Actinic, 4x pink, 4x Green

Pic is best I could find par reading for a 48" model 1" offset to 21" depth


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## jturner (Nov 26, 2014)

Lighting my favorite topic! A vivarium is both a place to grow plants and to display inhabitants for our pleasure/viewing. The perfect light spectrum for a vivarium IMO is that which has a continuous full spectrum for plant growth and high CRI to display plants and inhabitants with perfect color accuracy. I have accomplished this "perfect" light spectrum with COB chips that utilize a mixture of 420nm and 450nm blue chips coated with a red/green phosphor. This is instead of the typical yellow phosphor which leaves major gaps in the spectrum. 

I will be offering LED fixtures to test as samples in the next few weeks that utilize these COB chips. Shoot me a pm if you're interested. Here is a link to a thread explaining more on these.- https://www.dendroboard.com/forum/p...ct-sunlight-mimicking-95cri-vivarium-led.html
Note- I have not recently updated the thread but I have shifted over to using 100w light bars instead of the pendant fixtures for better spread and lower profile (same high CRI spectrum though).

Here is a spectrum graph. As you can see continuous full spectrum without gaps in violet, cyan, and red regions and near perfect CRI of 96.


And here is a pic of my 90 gallon display viv illuminated with 2x 100w 95CRI light bars.


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## jturner (Nov 26, 2014)

Also wanted to add this comparison photo to show the importance of high CRI for display purposes. My thought is we do all this work to keep these beautiful creatures the least we can do is provide quality lighting to view their natural vibrant colors. The white LEDs used in a beamswork fixtures and pretty well all commercially available aquarium/vivarium LEDs use a blue chip+yellow phosphor. This leads to poor color rendering, especially of reds and oranges. The high CRI chips instead use a red and green phosphor and you can see my Phyllobates terribilis "orange" is actually orange not a ghostly yellow. My brand name for the LEDs is "Vivaspec".


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## kurtatwork (Oct 2, 2012)

Socratic Monologue said:


> Kurt, you may not have the exact pricing at your fingertips, and likely it changes pretty rapidly, but I'm curious exactly how "prohibitively expensive" UVB diodes are. I'm losing my astonishment over how much people will easily spend on even even little pieces of their hobby. Maybe the masses couldn't be sold on UVB LEDs, but I don't get the impression that you're aiming at the mass market, exactly. What kind of dollars are we looking at?


I was willing to spend $50 a foot if there was enough output to positively affect the health of our herps, but the cost is more like $200 a foot the last time I checked. Ouch!

I do get the impression that some progress is being made. I emailed with a product rep to make sure that she understood the general specs that we need for herps. I also tried to get across how much the market is potentially worth, a LOT in my estimation. 

So far the issue is the size of the UV emitting diode. It needs to be large IMO, like no less then 5 watts, or else it will not penetrate very far into the tank. Diodes that are less than 1w are available now and they can be combined into a single strip product, but thats not going to cut it, even if you're willing to pay $200 a foot.

I usually check back with several product reps in China about every 6 months.


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## Kalle (May 14, 2010)

jturner said:


> Also wanted to add this comparison photo to show the importance of high CRI for display purposes. My thought is we do all this work to keep these beautiful creatures the least we can do is provide quality lighting to view their natural vibrant colors. The white LEDs used in a beamswork fixtures and pretty well all commercially available aquarium/vivarium LEDs use a blue chip+yellow phosphor. This leads to poor color rendering, especially of reds and oranges. The high CRI chips instead use a red and green phosphor and you can see my Phyllobates terribilis "orange" is actually orange not a ghostly yellow. My brand name for the LEDs is "Vivaspec".


I'm in the process of planning out a led build for an upcoming bigger viv. Your led's looks very promising! Do you offer only the finished light bars or individual leds as well? Shipping to Europe?


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## jturner (Nov 26, 2014)

Kalle said:


> I'm in the process of planning out a led build for an upcoming bigger viv. Your led's looks very promising! Do you offer only the finished light bars or individual leds as well? Shipping to Europe?


I can offer individual COB chips if you need. So far I have made 10w COB and 100w bicolor COB like in the thread I linked before but I can have other wattages made with a range of CCT(Kelvin Temp). Send me a PM if you're interested.


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## Pubfiction (Feb 3, 2013)

One of the most under appreciated properties of lights is the way they are spread across the top of the vivarium. Because of the way LEDs are built it is typically cheaper to make them more condensed, it saves money on metal, materials etc.... So this creates a dense light, but this light then casts harsh shadows. So the area in 1 spot in the viv might be receiving 100 PAR while 1 inch over a leaf is blocking that and you are getting 15 PAR. 
If you take something like a jungle dawn LED with a 1000 lumen output and you might get this effect, now if you spread the lights out as in the spectral designs, you might be using the same 13 watts as a the jungle dawn and might be outputting the same 100 lumens but now you have LEDs that can cast light all over the top of the vivarium and that will reduce your PAR lets say to 45 at spot 1 but keep it at 35 at the spot 1 inch over. You went from harsh high light low light, to having medium light in all over. 


So the effect of this is that more of the leaves on more of your plants receive a higher average of light if you spread the light out. I think this is the strongest advantage of a design like spectral designs. This means that your plants are going to look better in more places, drop less leaves near their base, and so on. 

This is why I recommend aquarium LED strips over condensed light like jungle dawns. Its also why I recommend people go for more lower power lights over less higher powered lights. You can put 2 LED strips across the top and spread light out more evenly and that will typically result better looking plants and lighting unfortunately its most often going to be more expensive. 


Traditionally people had very little control over lights prior to LEDs because they came in set formats, like a T5 bulb is just a strip with a fixed size and you can only do more or less bulbs. You didn't have the option to buy a T5 that put out 2000 lumens in the space of a quarter. because of this people didn't really think much about how the light was spread out cause it had to be placed in certain ways to fit on the tank. Now with LEDs you can buy 1 LED like say the jungle hobbies that blast ludicrous amounts of light from the center, or you can buy a bunch of LED strips and cover the entire top of the tank with them. And there are so many formats. This just makes comparing lights very complicated and most people don't have a PAR meter to see what's really going on.

Now let me just make one thing clear, when I speak of this effect I speak of exactly the same amount of total light being produced which is theoretical scenario. And that is a very important distinction. Tons of people compare lights and go oh this light grew plants better or that one but they are not comparing the same amount of light produced. That is also cause LEDs are so variable. And on top of that, tons of LED products don't even list comparable measures of light production which forces people to try and work with rules of thumb based on watts. That is why I made this post to actually try to figure out what was going on with some LEDs. https://www.dendroboard.com/forum/parts-construction/293089-par-measurements-many-lights.html


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## Kalle (May 14, 2010)

Pubfiction said:


> One of the most under appreciated properties of lights is the way they are spread across the top of the vivarium. Because of the way LEDs are built it is typically cheaper to make them more condensed, it saves money on metal, materials etc.... So this creates a dense light, but this light then casts harsh shadows. So the area in 1 spot in the viv might be receiving 100 PAR while 1 inch over a leaf is blocking that and you are getting 15 PAR.
> If you take something like a jungle dawn LED with a 1000 lumen output and you might get this effect, now if you spread the lights out as in the spectral designs, you might be using the same 13 watts as a the jungle dawn and might be outputting the same 100 lumens but now you have LEDs that can cast light all over the top of the vivarium and that will reduce your PAR lets say to 45 at spot 1 but keep it at 35 at the spot 1 inch over. You went from harsh high light low light, to having medium light in all over.
> 
> [...]


Totally agree. The sun normally produces very sharp and hard shadows as the light reaches us pretty much strictly parallell. But in a forest, under a green canopy of leaves, the light is filtered and diffused and shadows are much softer. So having a more widespread light also looks more natural, at least to me.


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## gex23 (Apr 15, 2008)

So i've noticed the loss of red colouration in all of my broms very quickly.

They coloured up nicely with the 6 x T5HO fixture, as you'd expect, but with this setup they don't seem to be getting the PAR / PUR values they need.

However, it's interesting we should be discussing the diffused light afforded to the lower levels of rainforests, as it occured to me that maybe we're trying to keep plants of differing light levels together, so some compromise has to be made with providing optimum conditions for particular species?

The examples that come to mind are orchids that require a lower / softer light to be happy, while bromeliads look their best with a much more intense PAR values?

I may swap back to some Radion Gen 4 pro freshwater units coupled with T5 lights and see what happens...

Very interesting discussions all told though


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## Pubfiction (Feb 3, 2013)

Kalle said:


> Totally agree. The sun normally produces very sharp and hard shadows as the light reaches us pretty much strictly parallell. But in a forest, under a green canopy of leaves, the light is filtered and diffused and shadows are much softer. So having a more widespread light also looks more natural, at least to me.


Yes and part of the effect you are seeing is that the sun is more akin to millions of LEDs really far away emitting light strait down. The sun is blasting around 2000 PAR so even if only 10% of the light is reflected off a leaf to scatter it that is still 200 PAR and in vivariums 200 PAR is usually considered high light. This is why at noon with no other lights you can go directly under a tree which blocks most like and you can still see perfectly fine and moss can grow great, however most people will tell you to supply high light and not block it to grow moss in a vivarium.


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## Pubfiction (Feb 3, 2013)

gex23 said:


> So i've noticed the loss of red colouration in all of my broms very quickly.
> 
> They coloured up nicely with the 6 x T5HO fixture, as you'd expect, but with this setup they don't seem to be getting the PAR / PUR values they need.
> 
> ...



Yes many plants we try to force into a vivarium have different conditional requirements. But one thing to keep in mind is that the plants can still have a very wide range of light and still work because the ranges in light in a vivarium are only a fraction of nature. If you look at my PAR readings for lights you will see there probably wouldn't be any case where any plant surpassed 600 PAR in all those lights. If plants didn't have the ability to handle different levels of light they would probably go extinct. Example your bromeliad can grow and live with 60 PAR, but you might need 150 PAR to color it up, however in nature it would be reasonable for that brom to see 1000 PAR and at certain points of the day it might hit 2000 PAR. IME most vivarium plants will live and grow at a pretty wide range of lights once acclimated, for most people the complete range of their plants lighting still qualifies as shade if you were to use a term gardeners use. 

If you know your specific requirements you can create microhabitats within your vivarium for specific plants. Sometimes if I have an extra PAR38 lying around I will put it over a vivarium with more spread out light and just aim it right at a bromeliad or other plant that can hand high light. IME all this works well and there are lots of ways to play it. But most people aren't going to be considering this cause they are more concerned with cost and getting one light to work. But you still have that option with positioning however if you get too condensed IE a single very concentrated light on a vivarium you are going to have massive variability from just say a single leaf growing in front of that light. So generally speaking a good rule of thumb is to shoot for a more spread out LED array.


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

Pubfiction said:


> One of the most under appreciated properties of lights is the way they are spread across the top of the vivarium. Because of the way LEDs are built it is typically cheaper to make them more condensed, it saves money on metal, materials etc.... So this creates a dense light, but this light then casts harsh shadows. So the area in 1 spot in the viv might be receiving 100 PAR while 1 inch over a leaf is blocking that and you are getting 15 PAR.
> If you take something like a jungle dawn LED with a 1000 lumen output and you might get this effect, now if you spread the lights out as in the spectral designs, you might be using the same 13 watts as a the jungle dawn and might be outputting the same 100 lumens but now you have LEDs that can cast light all over the top of the vivarium and that will reduce your PAR lets say to 45 at spot 1 but keep it at 35 at the spot 1 inch over. You went from harsh high light low light, to having medium light in all over.
> 
> 
> ...


This is yet another interesting factor to consider - the fine-scale spatial distribution of the light. In the forest, it works differently than our tanks because there are little flecks of high-intensity light that move around on the forest floor so that many of the plants are actually exposed very high-intensity light for brief periods of time. I remember way back when in a plant physiology class that plants are able to ramp up to full photosynthetic production in a matter of minutes to take advantage of these flecks. We can't duplicate the spatial pattern aspect very easily (move our lights back and forth?) but by ramping up and down, at least we are giving the plants different situations to adjust to. Regardless, I have never really thought of the light concentration aspect as a pure negative. If you 'scape and plant around where you know these bright spots are going to be, you can actually take advantage of different micro-niches that add interest and robustness (in terms of sustaining a larger number of species) to the tank. Interesting stuff!

Mark


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

Pubfiction said:


> Yes many plants we try to force into a vivarium have different conditional requirements. But one thing to keep in mind is that the plants can still have a very wide range of light and still work because the ranges in light in a vivarium are only a fraction of nature. If you look at my PAR readings for lights you will see there probably wouldn't be any case where any plant surpassed 600 PAR in all those lights. If plants didn't have the ability to handle different levels of light they would probably go extinct. Example your bromeliad can grow and live with 60 PAR, but you might need 150 PAR to color it up, however in nature it would be reasonable for that brom to see 1000 PAR and at certain points of the day it might hit 2000 PAR. IME most vivarium plants will live and grow at a pretty wide range of lights once acclimated, for most people the complete range of their plants lighting still qualifies as shade if you were to use a term gardeners use.
> 
> If you know your specific requirements you can create microhabitats within your vivarium for specific plants. Sometimes if I have an extra PAR38 lying around I will put it over a vivarium with more spread out light and just aim it right at a bromeliad or other plant that can hand high light. IME all this works well and there are lots of ways to play it. But most people aren't going to be considering this cause they are more concerned with cost and getting one light to work. But you still have that option with positioning however if you get too condensed IE a single very concentrated light on a vivarium you are going to have massive variability from just say a single leaf growing in front of that light. So generally speaking a good rule of thumb is to shoot for a more spread out LED array.


More great discussion. We really do take advantage of a lot of the plasticity in plant species' niche requirements in our tanks. Broms are one example on the high light side. There are probably lots of examples on the shady side, too. Lots of my plants grow "leggy" (increased inter-nodal spacing) in my tanks that have less light, but they still grow and put on size. I don't particularly like the leggy look, but the plant is none the worse for wear and will grow in a more compact form as soon as I choose to add light to it. 

Broms might turn red under high light, but I think this maybe just an aesthetic concern in our tanks. My broms grow and pup just fine without being "colored up" completely. In fact, the color in some plants could be a response to shade themselves from light that might otherwise damage them. I could be out on a limb there. Point is, we can grow a staggering number of species in our vivs simultaneously because the plants are able to grow in niches that are not optimal for them. The trick (for me, anyway) is to balance what can grow in tank with what I like the look of. An example of this balance is that I typically will grow broms that I want some red in at the top of the tank where the light is "strongest." If I want red broms deeper in the tank, I am probably going to have to sacrifice growing all but the most light and dry (depending on venting setup) tolerant species at the top. 

It's a bit of a tangent, but has anyone else ever noticed that the red in broms sometimes doesn't kick in until the plant pups and the new plants color up while the parent never does? This is another example of plants' adaptation to varying conditions. There is a price associated with being able to take advantage of any change in conditions that might be experienced. Plants can sometimes respond to these changes differently at different points in their life cycle. This is just another element of diversity that we can choose to take advantage of in our vivs if we pay enough attention (I usually don't...). It also means that just because you don't see immediate red in a brom, that doesn't mean you won't ever see it.

Mark


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## davecalk (Dec 17, 2008)

Interesting discussion. One of the things that often gets misunderstood in grow lights and LEDs, is how LEDs actually produce the various levels of color / light / brightness. There are also different aspects of light that really need to be understood.


For instance Color Temperature or CCT is a measure of the color of a light source relative to a black body at a particular temperature expressed in degrees Kelvin (K). 

Warm CCTs draw out the warm colors in furniture, art and other objects in the space. So designers for home lighting usually recommend 2700–3000K because they want to highlight the reds and yellows in the wood grain of your flooring or the warm comforting hues in fabrics.

Candlelight ranges from 1500–2000K

Soft white or warm white light is typically 2700K. It is what incandescent and halogen bulbs typically are. It is a warm, orange / yellow light. 

3000K is clean white.

Bright White/Cool White (3500K – 4100K) and a 4000K is listed as a "natural white."

Daylight (5000K – 6500K). The higher the Degrees in Kelvin, the whiter the color temperature.

Colors above 6000K typically have a bluer cast.












There are a couple of other important factors in LED color and light brightness which influences plant growth, color output etc.

One other factor is CRI or Color Rendering Index (Ra). This measures how well a given light source will render color. Scientists evaluate this by using 8 reference colors and comparing how they look under the light source to how those same colors appear under two reference sources: incandescent light (for warm color lamps) and daylight (for cool color lamps). CRI is represented by a number on a scale from 0 to 100 with 0 being "poor" and 100 being "excellent". The lower the number, the more distorted a color may look under the light source. 

Another factor in light output is the Lumen output, or actual brightness in how much light you are actually getting from a bulb or LED. With incandescent bulbs we used to look at watts to to compare light brightness. Now we compare the actual lumens, the actual amount of light being produced. The higher the lumen number the brighter light output; the lower the lumen number the dimmer the light output from the fixture or LED.



Full Spectrum light is a light that produces a light spectrum that covers the entire range of visible light (400-700nM) without gaps in its spectral output. 



White LEDs are inherently a full spectrum light source because of the way that LEDs produce light and color. There are lots of ways that manufactures create and control LEDs. Different LED chips do produce different spectrum wavelengths. 

White LED light, is generally produced by powering multiple diodes, Red, Green, & Blue (RGB) all at once with different intensities which then produces "White light". 

Different colors and intensities are produced by varying the color and intensity of each of the red, green and blue diodes which creates the different colors, or wavelengths of light. Different chip sets do it differently.

Digital RGB Addressable LEDs are RGB LEDs that contain their own "smart" control electronics. In addition to power and ground, these provide connections for data-in, data-out, and sometimes a clock or strobe signal. These are connected in a daisy chain, with the data in of the first LED sourced by a microprocessor, which can control the brightness and color of each LED independently of the others. 


Because costs have drastically dropped over the years these are the ones that I am playing with. 


Most plants grow best as they absorb a mixture of red & blue light. Their leaves are green because they are reflecting and are not using the light in the green spectrum. 



Different LED light strip chips have different abilities and lumen outputs.
3528 SMD vs. 5050 SMD vs. 3020 SMD all have different outputs / programmability, etc. 









There are also different ways of waterproofing LED light strips and different waterproofing standards for various LED light strips. Thus some strips can now be put inside the tank. I am working on a tank that will have multiple layers of light strips inside the tank that will be programmable. This will allow me to program dawn / dusk / changing shadows as if the wind is blowing was shifting through the trees producing light sun sprites and shadow changes / lightning storms with flashes emanating in different parts of the sky, moon phases, etc.










Lastly LED light strips have different viewing angles, also referred to as directivity or the directional pattern of a LED light beam. The expressed degree of the LED indicates the width of the light beam and also controls to some extent, the light intensity of a LED. LED view angles range from 8 to 360 degrees and are provided through the use of optics which are special lenses made to collimate light into a desired view angle.


Because we forget that color spectrums are a mix of these wavelengths we often only focus on a few things. 

Having a natural look with white sunlight only means that the light being produced the red and blue wavelengths but it also produces green light most plants don't use, but the addition of the green wavelengths also makes the white daylight that makes our tanks pleasant for us to look at. 

Actual grow lights are set up to produce only the red and blue without the green which is more energy efficient for growth, but looks highly unnatural.



Lastly the question of UVB LED lights often comes up. UVB LED lights are coming out, but right now they are extremely expensive and I'm not sure whether the data is in on how effective they are. 









With the costs of programable light strips having come down drastically over the past few years. It is worth investigating and experimenting.


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

davecalk said:


> Interesting discussion. One of the things that often gets misunderstood in grow lights and LEDs, is how LEDs actually produce the various levels of color / light / brightness. There are also different aspects of light that really need to be understood.../QUOTE]
> 
> This was an excellent contribution to the discussion, Dave. Thanks for taking the time to write it out. It's a great primer for some of the terms we have been (probably too casually) throwing around, but you also bring up some great things regarding future directions. I love the idea of a programmable setup that will actually simulate shadow. Plants are adapted to take advantage of this type of variation. I have never seen anything like that before. I would be interested in where you are sourcing the LED strips, drivers and controllers. I would also be interested in buying setups like this one when they are stable enough to be sold. I am not especially interested in doing my own programming for this type of controller, but I would pay when someone has it dialed in.
> 
> ...


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## davecalk (Dec 17, 2008)

Thanks,

I haven't been able to play in a long time. Family priorities. Finally have my daughter back in my home, full custody, and she is doing a 1000 % better. 

As far as LED lighting, there are other ways to go as well.

Ultra High Lumen 4FT LED Tube T8/T12 3000K Bulbs 5000K & 6000K


These are cool. 
20W retrofit kit two 2-foot magnetic linear LED retrofit kits and a magnetic-mount external driver. 2850 lumens 5000K 


These are a dimmable T-5 HO bulb LED Replacement bulb. 3500 Lumen, 5000K Works with the ballast, just swap out the bulb. Cuts power consumption over 1/2.
T-5 4ft LED Tube Plug and Play Ballast Compatible


These plug into a T8 fixture.
2 foot LED tube light for T8 and T12 fixtures 1080 lumens / Bulb, 10W Equivalent to a 20W fluorescent but using half the power. 


They are easy to install. 
Installation Instructions


The LED world is expanding and the costs are dropping.


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## JimM (Oct 2, 2018)

FWIW I ended up purchasing one of Kurt's fixtures (Spectral Designs) and couldn't be happier with it. Comes with a quality dimmer if I should decide to turn it down a bit (so far everything is responding well to the full tilt boogie setting) so I doubt I will. 

Thanks Kurt!


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