Ace's ATS v2.0 - LEDs

[Ace25]

So this is my second scrubber which will be installed tomorrow. I am replacing my old ATS/sump with this new and improved model after learning the do's and don'ts from version 1.

55G tank. 1st chamber 18" long, 1-1/2" overflow pipe feeds the ATS, screen is 12"x10.5". Chamber is painted black all the way around and bottom, and top will have a lid. This is to keep all light contained in the chamber and not grow algae all over the rest of my equipment. 1-1/2" pipe reduces down to a 3/4" with a valve as a safety overflow. I hope the lip that the reducer creates will be enough to give sufficient flow over the screen and allow my to keep the valve open for safety. LEDs are 6 LEDs per side, 50/50 mix of Cree Neutral and Warm whites using a meanwell 750mA constant current driver. 3 LEDs mounted per 10" of C channel aluminum inside a glass box with a lid over the box that will have 2 1.5" fans to keep air circulating in the box. Crossing my fingers this all works as planned.

[Floyd R Turbo]

Very interesting take on the blue LEDs. SM noted in his 'test' using the eshine fixture that he did not think it was doing anything. Maybe this is why.

I can't say that I agree that you will get any more growth by doing 4/4 vs any other cycle. Algae can only grow so fast, can't fool mother nature. I would think at best you would be able to get 1.5 to maybe double the growth. But I guess we will see!

[kerry]

Yes, great data. As I am reconfiguring my 10G LED horizontal screen to vertical I will leave room for a blue that I do have at this point but, I do have to order more for a display project in a week or so and I will be sure to get a few to try myself.

[Ace25]

To clarify a little better to what I was saying about blues. When I ran all 660nm LEDs, I got great growth, but when it came time to clean I could literally take a credit card and with a single swipe clean a section of screen, like using one of those car window cleaner things, one swipe wipes the water off the window. Since adding a blue back to the light, now it is more like removing paint from the wall, short 1" strokes with the credit card to really dig in and break the algae free. It really is a night and day difference on how easy/hard the algae comes off the screen.

As for the 4/4 light, ya, completely unknown how it will actually work. I suspect your right though Floyd and I won't see 3x the growth, but I think your right that 1.5 to maybe 2x the growth could be possible. We will see.

[SantaMonica]

It could be the opposite of what you think. Ease-of-scraping is from the roots dying. Dying is from lack of light and flow. It is possible that the all-reds actually caused more growth, which blocked more light and flow from reaching the roots.

[Ace25]

Certainly an interesting theory, and I may agree with it if it weren't for the fact I was running 6x 660nm for months, then the only thing I changed was I added a single royal blue to each side, going from 12 LEDs total up to 14 LEDs, 7 on each side, I didn't remove any reds. So your theory doesn't seem to fit my scenario unless your saying that by adding a blue it somehow reduced the effectiveness of the reds already running.

[Floyd R Turbo]

I think Ace is right based on that. And that is certainly a very, very interesting observation.

[bucks448]

Ace, I may have missed this. Did you add the blues to the same driver you were using for the reds? If so, wouldn't this reduce the current to all LEDs? Unless you had the REDs dimmed down before adding the blues and were able to compensate for the additional LEDs. Just thinking...

[kerry]

If you have your driver maxed out it that might be an issue. I have added LED's to my display and not seen any visual brightness difference but I had plenty of room to add more.

[Ace25]

Nope, a Meanwell driver can handle up to 14 LEDs per driver at its max output, so a 700mA driver will handle 14 LEDs @ 700mA, an ELN-60-48 will handle 14 LEDs @ 1300mA, or 28 LEDs at 650mA if you put 2 strings of 14 in series. Most people run 12 LEDs just so they are not maxing out the driver, but meanwells are solid and can handle it without problems, cheap China drivers on the other hand can not handle it at all (seen lots of them blow in less than a month trying to run them at max).