Not enough blue light?

[T-J]

Using my Seneye, I did a PAR map of my tank a few days ago. What I noticed is that my Kelvin map seems a bit shifted to the right. Do I need to adjust my lights to have more blue? I'm running what I believed to be a version of the AB+ schedule.

 

[Flippers4pups]

Less red spectrum.

 

[T-J]

Less red spectrum.

Should I just lower red, or lower the red and increase any of the others?

 

[Porpoise Hork]

What type of light is it?

NM I looked at your build thread. I ran the V2+ for over a year. They are amazing lights. When setting the color channels you need to look at the AI Hydra HD series settings as the Photon uses the exact same LED's as the Hydras. So when you set them using the Coral Lab guide, the spectrum is not quite right. Another thing to note on the Photon, the reds are very powerful so you can easily cut them in 1/2 of the current setting. The green channel can be dropped to zero. The reason for this is the white channel provides enough in the mid spectrum that the green isn't really needed, and the corals don't use it anyway. It's there for visual appeal more than anything else. This is directly from Logan at ReefBreeders. To make up for the loss in PAR with the reduction in red and green you can bring the white channel up to about 25 and the blues to 75. This should balance the spectrum out a bit more.

You can also raise the light up to 12" above the water line to improve blending, reduce the disco effect, and provide a more uniform par map across the entire tank.

 

[T-J]

What type of light is it?

NM I looked at your build thread. I ran the V2+ for over a year. They are amazing lights. When setting the color channels you need to look at the AI Hydra HD series settings as the Photon uses the exact same LED's as the Hydras. So when you set them using the Coral Lab guide, the spectrum is not quite right. Another thing to note on the Photon, the reds are very powerful so you can easily cut them in 1/2 of the current setting. The green channel can be dropped to zero. The reason for this is the white channel provides enough in the mid spectrum that the green isn't really needed, and the corals don't use it anyway. It's there for visual appeal more than anything else. This is directly from Logan at ReefBreeders. To make up for the loss in PAR with the reduction in red and green you can bring the white channel up to about 25 and the blues to 75. This should balance the spectrum out a bit more.

You can also raise the light up to 12" above the water line to improve blending, reduce the disco effect, and provide a more uniform par map across the entire tank.

Thanks so much! This was amazing information.

 

[Porpoise Hork]

Anytime. The only real downside to owning that light is the lack of testing like that of name brand lights. Makes it rather challenging to dial it in just right.

In the 18 months I ran mine with settings very similar to what I suggested before swapping to Hydra26's I saw amazing growth and coloration in my all my corals.

Here is the tank when I first set it up. It's not the best picture but you can see a lot of the corals are in the same spots.

And here is is just before I swapped to the Hydras.

 

[T-J]

Anytime. The only real downside to owning that light is the lack of testing like that of name brand lights. In the 18 months I ran mine with settings very similar to what I suggested before swapping to Hydra26's I saw amazing growth and coloration in my all my corals.

Here is the tank when I first set it up. It's not the best picture but you can see a lot of the corals are in the same spots.

And here is is just before I swapped to the Hydras.

Looks great! Which HD series are you referring to when you say mine uses the same LEDs? I’m looking at AB+ schedules for the Hydras, and I want to make sure I’m using the right one.

 

[Porpoise Hork]

The Hydra 26 HD's. I went from the Photon to 4 of them. The one thing the I think that Photon has over the hydras is uniform coverage. With it's expanded layout it provides about the closest one can get to T5 coverage from a single LED fixture. Otherwise the Photon and Hydras are pretty much evenly matched. I would switch back to the Photon for that coverage, but the wife would kill me if I did.

 

[T-J]

The Hydra 26 HD's. I went from the Photon to 4 of them. The one thing the I think that Photon has over the hydras is uniform coverage. With it's expanded layout it provides about the closest one can get to T5 coverage from a single LED fixture. Otherwise the Photon and Hydras are pretty much evenly matched. I would switch back to the Photon for that coverage, but the wife would kill me if I did.

I love the ReefBreeders. No issues. Run cool. Great price!
Here’s the 26HD AB+ I found, but their settings don’t exactly translate to how the Photon settings work (I can’t go above 100%).

 

[Slawman]

It depends. Seawater filters out certain colours as you go deeper, reds goes first, blues last (deepest). So the very simple answer is that you want to roughly align the colour profile of your light system to the depth range where your animals thrive on a natural reef. Then add to that you own personal view of how you like your tank to look.

I personally run a profile consistent with what you would get at about 15 foot depth and then run my royal blues late to all my bio luminescent corals glow which I think looks awesome.

 

[T-J]

This is what I came up with. It did shift to the left a bit, dropped off the green, increased PAR just a tad, but overall has a bit more blue to it. I'll leave it at this for the next month or two and observe.