What kelvin are these tanks?

[Miami Reef]

 

[Miami Reef]

I’m getting frustrated because I can’t find a balance for my light settings. Too blue and corals look good but tank looks too blue and fish can’t be seen. Too white and corals, rocks look hideous.

What’s the balance? 14k 16k 18k??

I like the colors of the tanks above. What are they?

 

[Miami Reef]

Here’s my tank.

 

[Ando1231]

I’m getting frustrated because I can’t find a balance for my light settings. Too blue and corals look good but tank looks too blue and fish can’t be seen. Too white and corals, rocks look hideous.

What’s the balance? 14k 16k 18k??

I like the colors of the tanks above. What are they?

Are those pictures not taken with a colored lens/filter?

 

[reefinatl]

almost impossible to tell what they may actually be because of filters and weirdness. If you want that look in person I'd call it somewhere around 18k-20k. Similar-ish to some old school phoenix or radium mh, or some t5 combos.

Can't really tell you what LED settings to choose, could just buy a 6-8bulb t5 or some halides and be done with it. No hot spots or messing with par meters.

 

[Lost in the Sauce]

Are those pictures not taken with a colored lens/filter?

They most definitely are

 

[ZoWhat]

Kelvin is a color-shade of white light. White is the combo of all visible light made up of blues, greens, yellows, orange, reds

So all white has different intensities of b, g, y, o, r

Look at Daylight, incandescent, fluorescent, halogen, cool white, warm white

The higher the Kelvin #, the more blue peak

The lower the Kelvin #, the more yellow/orange peak

******************

Now..... lights are also measured in nanometers NMs

The higher the NM #, the more towards red

The lower the NM #, the more towards blue/purple

Kelvin and NMs #s work in opposition direction away from each other on their scaling......, higher # vs lower #

I.e. the higher the Kelvin # the more blue is involved where as the higher the NM # the more red


.

 

[blasterman]

We need to dispose of Kelvin scales and correlated color temp with today's LED reef lights. Back in the days of halides it was kinda a standard because halide bulbs had a quasi standard in terms of color spikes and peaks, but even then it was variable. A 14k Radium looked nothing like a 14k Phoenix. However, both lights were bluer than a 10k Ushio and not as blue as a 20k Coralux.

CCT is really just an average of the various color spikes , and is pretty pointless with today's LEDs. CCT really only works with continous spectrum sources.

Miami Reef points out the problem with first gen Reef LEDs . They were royal blue and cool white LEDs only, and a cool white LED is a royal blue plus a lot of green. So when you turned up the whites to compensate for the blue you got green, and dull brown corals.

I fixed this problem years ago by adding a lot of red and warm white LEDs on a channel and use those to balance blue and just a bit of white. Reef Breeders had a light for awhile that was just royal blue, white and red on 3 channels and it made mixed reef tanks look like those pictures. Red and purple corals jump out nicely.

I'm guessing the top tank is T5, and T5 have some cool bulbs like the Fiji purple that mixes in a lot of orange and red to pull out those warmer color corals. Gives those looney tune colors that a Radion or Kessil can't do because they dont have enough red channel available. Its wasted on violet/uv trash LEDs that do nothing but waste PCB space.

Orpheks can mimmick those tanks because they have a lot of warm color channels to play with, but the price...... The reef breeders light allowed you to get a T5 like pallette for a fraction the price but its no longer made.

I've played with both Radion Pro and Blue and they dont have enough red to get a cool palette like the higher end T5 combos. They just want PAR numbers.

 

[TLO45]

Do you know who’s tanks those are? Pm them and ask what they are doing and mimic that. Just my $.02