Here’s a little background of what makes an “ideal spectrum,” an overview of some popular settings in other lights, and our spectra:
Coral have a variety of photosynthetic and accessory pigments within their tissue which work to harvest light and even protect the tissue from oxidative stress. To deliver higher quality light, we must deliver light that covers their pigments’ absorption curves. While coral species and even individual specimens may have different optimal absorption curves, they all share a commonality in that the pigments of greatest concentration are chlorophylls followed by the carotenoids.
(Pigment contents among seven coral species studied)
Without diving into any of our proprietary software packages or employing creative graphical design programs (i.e. Photoshop), let’s have a look at some of the spectra of contemporary and historically successful lights using UPRtek’s uSpectrum spectral analysis suite. UPRtek is a well-respected high-end spectrometer manufacturer. (They’re the same company that makes the spectrometers used by BRS.)
uSpectrum features a library of pigments such as chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, and carotenoids (eg. beta carotene) which we’ll use for this analysis. To collect spectrometric data, all lights were tested in dark rooms, in open air, under the brightest points of their light fields (hotspots). The main reason we test in open air and not underwater is to negate environmental variables which can influence the results (some tanks may have less reflectivity than others).
Spectrometric Data Test Setup (we laser align and test thermals as well):
Plotting the absorption curves of chlorophyll a, b, and carotenoids, we see a broad region of activity between 400 and 500nm and some activity between 500-600nm, thus making a simplistic “reference spectrum.”
-Light Tests-
Here’s our first light, the AI Prime 16HD. We chose this light because it’s the newest light in our collection, its board was manufactured in the 12th week of this year and conforms to AI’s published spectra. The 16HD and 32HD also have comparable spectrums.
Setting 1: BRS Recommended (6/5/2020)
(UV: 166% VI: 166% RY: 125% BL: 125% GR: 10% DR: 10% ML:0% CW: 65% )
Setting 2: Saxby (@2:50PM)
(UV: 52% VI: 62% RY: 99% BL: 91% GR: 8% DR: 10% ML: 0% CW: 41%)
Our next light, the 26HD. This light is also brand new (<4 hours of use, never over a tank), was assembled in August 2019, and conforms to AI’s published spectra for the fixture. Except for the Deep Red LEDs in the Hydras, the Prime HDs use the same diodes.
Setting 1: BRS AB+ (9/27/2018)
(UV: 118%, VI: 101%, RY: 82%, BL: 65%, GR: 6%, DR: 5%, CW: 19% )
Setting 2: BRS Custom Settings (4/10/2020)
(UV:110, VI: 110%, RY: 115%, BL: 115%, GR: 10%, DR: 10%, CW: 50%)
Some Well-known Bulbs:
ATI Blue Plus:
ATI Actinic 03:
By crowdsourcing data collection with others who have spectrometers we also have data for several other lights:
Hamilton 20000K (telegraham):
Radion XR30 G4 (AB+ Template) (telegraham):
Radion XR30 G6 Blue (AB+ Template) (ReefMoonshiners):
ATI Straton (LPS-SPS Preset) (ReefMoonshiners):
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And finally, LUX Engine
LUX Engine Gold Reef Daylight:
LUX Engine Gold Optimized III:
LUX Engine Gold Ultra Blue:
LUX Engine Blue Reef Daylight:
LUX Engine Blue Ultra Blue:
LUX Engine Blue Optimized III:
LUX Engine Cyan Reef Daylight:
LUX Engine Cyan Optimized III:
LUX Engine Cyan Ultra Blue:
When coming up with LUX Engine’s spectral distribution, we paid careful attention to making the spectrum as broad as possible, while still allowing it to be dynamic enough that you can customize it how you like it, whether it’s the settings you program or even the diodes in the layout you choose. As a result, the layouts are capable of perhaps the widest spectra in the industry and are tuned for optimal spectral distribution.
How white this looks depends on how much white the clusters are set to and also the cluster variant. Since more power is distributed to the more useable colors, there’s a negligible performance penalty when adjusting the whites (controlled by the slider that controls the center LEDs, typically the blue channel). As always, this can be set to personal preferences, though wavelengths produced by white are important for the proper expression of chromoproteins, especially in some SPS.
