I like that lens at the bottom of the Cutter page.
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I like that lens at the bottom of the Cutter page.
More LED news.
A cheap and efficient deep red LED from Osram
LH W5AM-1T3T-1-L-Z
http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Osr ... NWtQ%3d%3d
Still need to get my feet wet on mounting these LED emitters to boards but it is nice to see some more options become available.
Hope this helps.
I think the led scrubber will be feasible soon... just got to get the initial price down.
Well, if you are willing to go with cheap ebay warm white + red LEDs, the cost is down.
You can buy those 3W LEDs for less than $2 with shipping off ebay.
So a 35W system ends up only about $60 or so.
Get some volume discounts, and a cheaper power supply, and that is $50 or less.
Which is about the same as a good T5 setup.
Sure, not as efficient as our fancy deep-red thoughts (maybe), but good enough.
Experimental results:
I did this mostly as curiosity, and to test my new main-tank LED sets.
But very relevent on how it shows very clearly how the wrong spectrum can render an ATS useless.
The left side is driven by my new main tank LED set. 2 x XP-G Cool white + XP-E Royal Blue.
A fairly common 10,000K-12,000K equivalent bluish light. Looks really nice in my tank.
The right side is driven by my algae-specialized LED set. 2 x Deep Red + 1 x Blue.
This picture is the lighting. Obvious color difference.
[attachment=1:27gtj9nq]experiment_1.jpg[/attachment:27gtj9nq]
This other picture is the result. You can clearly see the lack of algae growth on the left.
Unfortunately I did not take a pic earlier, but it turned a rather ugly dark brown. I scraped that off,
and basically very little grew there afterwards.
Note: Resolutions/angles are different, but that line of good/bad lines up with LEDs.
[attachment=0:27gtj9nq]experiment_2.jpg[/attachment:27gtj9nq]
Yes a dark brown growth is a symptom of the lighting not being strong enough relative to the nutrient levels. Thus, dark growth to start, until nutrients come down, then lighter growth. But your red led's deliver more lighting for growth, and thus the green growth is able to "power through" and grow right away.
More LED news.
Notice the second paragraph. (warm white LED)
http://www.led-professional.com/technol ... in-the-lab
In case the link breaks search this.
Epistar Red-Orange LED Chips Set Efficacy Record in the Lab
Still in development but it is encouraging to see the development of the red led tech ( AlGaInP, AlGaAs etc...) instead of mainly "blue/cool white" led.
Hope this helps
Yes, interesting news.
Fortunately for our main tanks, we like the current extra blue used in the conversion to warm.
But for lights around the house, sounds great.
More led news.
The new Cree XM-L cool white led are shipping Mid Nov..
http://cutter.com.au/products.php?cat=Cree+XM-L
These are the latest and greatest cool white led available.
Notice the maximum drive current: 3000 mA WOW! (this # for a single die led is very large)
Times are changing.
Hope this helps.
An amusing note:
Because of the ongoing build for my new tank, I left the poor white/blue section as-is.
The funny thing is, I am getting a bit of Coraline algae growth there.
Guess Coraline likes the blue.
Note that with 1/3 of the filter not doing well, I definitely get more nuisance algae in the main tank.