Lighthouse LED ATS Experiment

[kbb0118]

I decided to experiment with some of the latest hydroponic grow lights. Not those cheap eBay panels, but the high power LED fixtures from LightHouse Hydro with 1 or 2 watt CREE LEDs. I got the fistures from Gotham Hydroponics after actually speaking to real people at Gotham. I found them to be very knowledgeable and helpful. I'm not sure if vegetative with some flowering spectrum will be better than a more red spectrum for flowering. The purpose of this test is to see if these hydroponic lights will do a comparable job of growing algae at a cost lower than T5.

General specs for my 1st Generation test setup:

Screen and Container:
16.25" x 15" this is limited by the old 18G plastic tote I'm using for testing. 487 Sq inches total. Generally I try to avoid long term usage of non-food grade plastics in my reef, so as soon as I know if this will work my plan is to build a black acrylic cube. The cube will cost about $120 USD in materials plus time.
Depending on how things go, I am assuming these lights are powerful enough to cover at least a 18" x 18" screen at a distance of 9"-10". The ATS container will be large due to the distance required to spread the light over the screen. A better configuration would be a rectangle or square fixture but for the price, these round fixtures were more bang for the buck.

Flow target: Approx 570 GPH

Lights:
2010 model 90W Lighhouse Hydro CREE 6 band, more vegetative spectrum, but includes some flowering reds
Diameter: 10.5 Inches
Depth: 2.5 Inches
Number of LED's: 90
Total Wattage: 90
Lifecycle: 50,000hrs
6 Band LED
Deep Red LED: 660nm
Mid Red LED: 630nm
DEEP Ultra Violet LED: 380nm
Infrared LED: 730nm
HO Cree Blue/White 101 Lumens/led
HO Cree HO White 111 Lumens/led
16,400 lumens
Approx cost $175 USD
SKU: LHH90WHO

2011 model 100W Lighthouse Hydro Blackstar CREE Led SIX BAND grow light, more flowering spectrum.
Size: 7" Diameter
Number of LED's: 50
Total Wattage: 100
Lifecycle: 50,000hrs
6 Band LED
Red LED: 630-660nm
Deep Spectrum Blue: 425nm
Universal Voltage: 90v-240v
Beam Angle: 120deg, 90 , 60deg
Bands 730/660/630/12k/425/380
Approx shipped cost $150 USD


Current status: Holes are cut in the tote to fit the lights. Screen is cut to size. Tonight the PVC will be cut and assembled and the pump hooked up. It will be UGLY, but this is a test after all.

[kbb0118]

Baseline Readings 6/22/2011 3:30pm:
Nitrate (Red Sea Nitrate Pro high res): 2-3 ppm
Phosphate (Hanna Checker) 0.05 ppm
Both readings were absolute zero just few weeks ago.

[kbb0118]

7 day pic updates! I need som expert advice. Do you think the lights need to be further away or I need to increase the flow? I'm not sure. The center of the screen is kindof baldish. Browns grew there but not many greens. I cleaned it off with just the sink sprayer and the greens remained. Greens are definitely hair algae and began showing up around day 4.

100W side before cleaning, first 7 days of growth:
http://www.tcmas.org/forums/picture.php?albumid=610&pictureid=7151

90W side before cleaning, first 7 days of growth:
http://www.tcmas.org/forums/picture.php?albumid=610&pictureid=7152

100W Side after cleaning off the browns and leaving the greens:
http://www.tcmas.org/forums/picture.php?albumid=610&pictureid=7153

90W Side after cleaning off the browns and leaving the greens:
http://www.tcmas.org/forums/picture.php?albumid=610&pictureid=7154

[SantaMonica]

Definately not getting enough nutrients to the middle. More flow, more iron, less hours of light.

[kbb0118]

Excellent - I'll make the adjustment now. Thank you!

[rygh]

Fun experiment!

Definitely agree with more flow and less light.
In fact, possibly by pretty close to a factor of 2 on both.

Also given the nice round spot effect, you might want to move the light back significantly, or add some diffusion grating
between LED and screen, to bounce around the light a bit.

[kbb0118]

I increased the flow and changed the lighting to be 2 hours less per day. I'll see if I can get some of that diffusion grating today. It would help protect the lights from splatter too! These lights are pretty powerful.

[kbb0118]

Small update. I got really sick of my ghetto rig leaking. The final straw was this morning when I came downstairs to find 4 gallons of water on the carpet. I've had plenty of spills before for various reasons but it still hurts. So the ATS has been moved to my sump, which I probably should have done in the first place. :roll:

Adding iron to the tank and increasing the flow has definitely helped. Each cleaning is producing less and less brown stuff and more green stuff, plus the center hole effect is gone. I'll see if I can get some photos tonight after I re-rig the LED fixtures into my stand. Need more cup hooks! Looks like the skimmer and biopellets have got to go :mrgreen: not enough room. I was hoping to have skimmer, pellets and ATS going for a few more weeks until the screen is a little more established.

I'm setting up a CFL 276 watt ATS (18" x 12") in my fish room (breeding setup of 250 gallons and 10 tanks of varying sizes) in a spare 40 breeder I have. Should be fun.

[kbb0118]

Updated setup pics. It is much quieter, and the lights are safer from spray with some super thin acrylic pieces from Lowes. Also if it leaks, well...it will do so into the sump. I'm pleased. Hopefully the good growth will continue. Adding iron and maxing the flow has definitely helped. So far I see no noticable difference between the growth of the 90w vs the 100w, but I'll give it some more time.

http://www.tcmas.org/forums/picture.php?albumid=610&pictureid=7247

http://www.tcmas.org/forums/picture.php?albumid=610&pictureid=7246

http://www.tcmas.org/forums/picture.php?albumid=610&pictureid=7245

[Ace25]

Keep us updated. Going off the specs for the 100w light it seems like it would be a good light for the ATS, although not sure why some of those spectrums are in there (380 and 730). Seems like it could benefit more if they removed those 2 types of LEDs and put in more 425nm blues.

[Floyd R Turbo]

Nice build. Will be following.

[kbb0118]

Holy crap. A good surprise for once!

Um I think its working....
Nitrates measure 0.25ppm (Red Sea Nitrate Pro test)
Phosphates measure 0.00 ppm (Hanna Checker 713)

This is AFTER my skimmer overflowed and dumped a 3/4 full cup of skimmate into the tank. I knocked the venturi tube off when I was hanging this bugger (dumb).

All I can say is WOW.

[rygh]

Great to hear it is working!

You will probably never see a difference in growth between the two. The screen is partially transparent, so will
equal out a bit.

I do wonder about that 16,400 lumen spec though.
The white ones that produce the most visible lumens are only 111 lumen/W, so a 90W fixture has to be less than 10,000 lumens.
And on one that looks so purple, I would have thought it would be in the 7,000 range or so.

Hard to tell from picture, but it still looks like it could use more flow.
Have you measured actual flow? Don't trust pump specs.

[kbb0118]

I don't have any way to measure flow. Aren't flow meters like $175? The QO 4000 was spraying water everywhere so I put a QO 3000 on and it seems to be good. Maybe my screen slit needs to be wider? I did clean the pipe inside and out and also cleaned the pump last night. Maybe that will help.

Updated growth photos, day 46 (week 6.5).

I got 2.8 ounces (squeezed) of algae off both sides. Some was black/dark brown/dark red gooey at the top and the rest was a good darker green color.

90W side
http://www.tcmas.org/forums/picture.php?albumid=610&pictureid=7269

100W side
http://www.tcmas.org/forums/picture.php?albumid=610&pictureid=7268

[Floyd R Turbo]

Here's how I suggest you do it, excerpt from the "basics" thread



For a drain fed scrubber, fill a pitcher with the water entering the sump. You will probably need to rig up a temporary pipe or routing configuration so that you can fill the container. For a pump-fed scrubber, set up the pump in a sink filled with water to the same level as your pump will be submerged, and connect the tubing required to reach the height of the connection to the horizontal slot tube, so that you mimic as best as possible the actual conditions. Backpressure created by the slot/screen is negligible unless your flow rate significantly exceeds 35 GPH per inch of slot length.

Now that you've done all this, fill the container and record the time it takes to fill it. Do this at least a dozen times. The way I do this is by using a recording device, like a digital voice recorder, and just calling out "Go" and "Stop", then afterward, playing it back and using a stopwatch to get the time intervals. You could also have someone else run the stopwatch and write down the times. Average out the times and then figure out how many gallons per hour of flow you are actually getting. If you have multiple drains, measure and extrapolate GPH for each individually, and then add together.

For instance, if you are using a 1/2 gallon pitcher, and it takes 4.5 seconds to fill it, then you would have (0.5 gallons / 4.5 seconds) x (3600 seconds / 1 hour) which would be 400 GPH.

[kbb0118]

Well heck that is simple enough. I'll give that a try. Thanks!

[kbb0118]

Ok my flow is approx 515 GPH. My screen is 16.25" wide, so my target is 569 GPH. Is that close enough or should I put back the QO 4000?

[Floyd R Turbo]

Should be close enough. I ran mine for 6 months with 20 GPH/in due to a calculation error. Hence why I stress that in my summary. Currently I run a 20" wide screen on a top-of-tank setup (temporary tank) driven directly be a Mag5 on a 1" line so I know I'm not getting proper flow (haven't measured it, but just based on pump specs), but growth is fantastic.

I was asking because your growth looks very dark but tank is low nutrients. Must be pulling a lot out, or still ramping up. Either that, or it's still maturing. You should have more stringy fluffy green I would think. Maybe the lights are overpowered too, you can see the hotspots on both sides of the screen right where the round light is aiming.

From e-mailing with Sean, he's telling me that LEDs have roughly 2x the efficiency of T5HO, photosynthetically speaking. So watt-for-watt you want about 1/2 of what you would normally use. So for your screen, 15 x 16.25 = 240 ish, you would really only need 120W of LED in the proper spectrum. You're running 190, but 2 different types of mixtures, so I don't know how that affects everything. You would probably be safe backing the lights off of the screen a bit and spreading out the signature, or leaving them where they are and gluing on a sheet of diamond diffuser to your splash guards.

Just thinking out loud. I'm very curious to see how these fixtures work out.

[kbb0118]

This experiment has been interesting. I do have high nutrients for sure. The screen seems to be getting better and better. I'm just on week 6.5 so about halfway to an "established" screen from what I understand. Adding iron helped a lot. I'm in the midst of adjusting Alk, Cal and Mag back to proper levels. Before I started this little experiement my tank was a mess, with the skimmer overflowing constantly (reversible pump impeller), way too many fish, a blocked overflow, blah blah. My last nitrate and phosphate readings are encouraging.

[Floyd R Turbo]

From what I read, it was low nutrients, N in single digits and P below 0.10. That led me to think that it was high in the past and you're pulling stuff out of the rocks.

I would think that at 6 weeks your screen is pretty well established, w/r to it's ability to hang on to algae growth that is. The 'curing' time is really only related to how long it takes for the base mat of the algae to 'bond' to the screen material. That seems to take 4-6 weeks. After that, you have a much lower risk of algae detaching.

So what was the N and P before the scrubber was fired up?

[kbb0118]

Baseline Readings 6/22/2011 3:30pm:
Nitrate (Red Sea Nitrate Pro high res): 2-3 ppm
Phosphate (Hanna Checker) 0.05 ppm

In the past they have been much higher on this tank. The Nitrates were over 4ppm (top range of my test) and phosphates upwards of 0.15 ppm at various times throughout my battle. I once did the Nitrate reduction method (effectively a 99% water change) just to have the Nitrates return back to 2ppm within 2 weeks. Very frustrating as that 99% water change was a big pain.

I have HA on my rocks still.

[SantaMonica]

Algae on the rocks confuses a lot of people. Your reading will be low, but growth on the screen will act like high nutrients. That's what yours is doing.

[Floyd R Turbo]

Wow 99% PWC on a tank with 4ppm Nitrates? I would not freak out until 10-20 ppm personally.

My tank runs 0.0 on Sailfert and P=0.09 on Hanna checker regularly. Actually I just got 0.07 which is the lowest P I've ever had on my tank.

I think SM is right, your tank has a 'scrubber' on the rocks, will take time to outcompete it. If you're getting black slimy algae, you want to clean more often. If it's dark brown, you're OK.

[kbb0118]

Excellent. I'll keep on it then. Thanks for your help guys!

[Floyd R Turbo]

Have you noticed any significant difference between the 90W side versus the 100W side?

[kbb0118]

I can't really tell a difference to be honest. They seem to do about the same. Next time I clean I'm going to measure scrapings from each side separately and see if one fixture is doing better.

[Floyd R Turbo]

yeah, it didn't look like much of a difference, but sometimes it's hard to tell from a picture. Plus, I don't think you'll really start to see much of a difference until you start to get some thick green growth (as the nutrients get pulled from the system)

[kbb0118]

Updated parmeters 8/11/2011
Nitrate is up to 0.50 ppm from 0.25 ppm on 8/5
Phosphate is still zero ppm on the Hanna Checker

Cleaned screen is greening up nicely so far.

[Floyd R Turbo]

Post a FTS when you have time. If you have P=0 then N may not be getting absorbed. I have the opposite problem. I'm just curious how much LR you have for de-nitrifying. Could still be leeching out so might come down on it's own.

[kbb0118]

This is a FTS from when I set up the tank originally. Same amount of LR now. I could probably use more rock. It's BRS "Reef Saver" Eco Rock
http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/store/brs ... -rock.html (http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/store/brs-reef-saver-dry-aquarium-eco-rock.html)

I bought more dead rock but it's curing still.

http://www.tcmas.org/forums/picture.php?albumid=399&pictureid=5137

[kbb0118]

My nems are very upset lately. Moving around like crazy.

[kbb0118]

Had a fairly major setback with this. The lights are not holding up well against the high moisture of my sump. One light has stopped working altogether. So I'm discontinuing the use of these lights. I'll likely use the one working light to grow sea grass or maybe on the outside of a glass tank based ATS for my breeding system or something. I've ordered acrylic and lights to make a SM100. It should be quieter and have no spraying and leaking issues. I do believe the LED ATS would work (grow enough algae) but I would have to build a very large box for it and that won't fit in my DT sump. Back to the drawing board.

[Floyd R Turbo]

I wondered if that was going to happen to you. Those have an intake fan on the back so all the moisture from the open screen is getting blown right into the fixture. It would probably have worked much better with an enclosed box, or at least a spray blocker to keep the moisture contained.

[kbb0118]

I've always had spray blockers up thankfully (thin plexiglass covering both sides of the screen that are about 2" bigger than the screen). The rust generally wipes right off on the outside of the fixutre but I would bet the damage is bad internally since one fixture is caput already. I thought about building clear acrylic boxes to encase them, but without some kind of dessicant to dry the air they'd still be very humid. It's too bad really. I will continue to tinker with the LEDs but for now I'm rolling back to a "sure thing" design for good filtration. I'm going to dismantle the one that won't work anymore and try to replace the drivers to get it working again....when I have time for such nonsense. I have baby humans and baby fish to raise!

[Floyd R Turbo]

Any update on your system?