Yes, it will not be a problem.Originally Posted by Ace25
Current handling of the LedEngin exceeds normal 3W.
The forward voltage is basically the same.
And under-driving LEDs is fine. They will work even at very low currents.
Yes, it will not be a problem.
Current handling of the LedEngin exceeds normal 3W.
The forward voltage is basically the same.
And under-driving LEDs is fine. They will work even at very low currents.
Got my reds in today.. I decided to put 2 royal blues on one side to see if it makes any difference. So one side is 3 Warm white, 3 neutral white, and 4 660nm reds, other side is 2 warm, 2 neutral, 2 royal blue, and 4 reds.
Thought this pic looked cool, camera couldn't focus good on the lights and this is how one picture came out
Couple pics of what it looks like installed.
Side by side old / new
From above
Looks very cool!
I hope you get some good data.
This weeks cleaning pictures:
Red/White Side
Red/White/Blue Side
Harvest (wet: 38.2G on Red/White side (left), 37.9G on Red/White/Blue side (right))
So that's a 60 W scrubber, is that right? Is a spectral graph available for the different LEDs? I would have expected a greater difference in the color as well as the yield of algae. Thanks for posting your results.
Yes, about 60w of LEDs @ 750mA. As far as a spectral graph, Cree has them on the web for the whites, and for the blue and reds, they are monochromatic, so blues are 450nm and reds are 660nm.
One very minor difference was visually the side with only red/whites seemed slightly darker in person. The side with the blues seemed a tad lighter in color and also had slightly more "slime" in the algae. Since this was only 7 days since adding reds/blues I can't draw a good conclusion quite yet, especially since I cleaned the screen to near new looking right before I added the new colored LEDs. This time I just used an old credit card to clean (no toothbrush scrubbing this time) so I will see how that changes things for next cleaning. I suspect I will have more weight when I harvest next week. So far, I do think the reds are helping, but too soon to say for sure.
Since there is no yellowing, it is still ready for more power. Double the power will probably put it into the green hair within a week.
Another week, another harvest. Harvest weight (wet but squeezed as much water out as I could): Red/White side=50grams, Red/White/Blue side=46grams. PAR is higher at the screen than a SM100 scrubber, so I am doubting that lighting is an issue, but I still think I can refine it more (possibly use optics/switch out the whites for more reds/blues to maximize LED potential). I also added a Maxijet 1200 going up through my emergency output side so I have about 500GPH coming in from the overflow side and 300GPH coming from othe opposite side. It seemed to help out. Now I am thinking my slot it just a tad too tight... when all clean it is loose, but any little bit of algae gets stuck in the pipe and it causes flow problems in narrow spots on the screen, as can be seen by the yellowing areas on each side which corresponded with less flow over those spots.
Red / White side:
Red / White / Blue side
Better picture to show true coloring of the screen, pics above don't come out showing the true color due to angle, lighting, and really crappy camera I have.
This is one of the reasons why I decided to do my experiment. I don't think you can compare growth from one screen on one system to another screen on another system quantitatively. The growth from any system I believe is affected by a variety of parameters, from feeding, water quality, top off water quality, bio-load of fish, even corals, amount of live rock, etc. I guess I will have better insight when I build scrubbers for the 2 other tanks that I maintain, because then I will have 2 tanks running T5HO scrubbers.
As for your scrubber, if you are getting algae pieces stuck in the pipe from the inside, yes that is a problem and your slot may need to be widened so that particles make it through, but if you're talking about algae growth on the screen blocking flow, keep in mind that as algae grows into the slot it will get partially blocked and then the water flow will balance eventually to compensate, causing growth in other sections of the slot which will block flow and cause an increase in pressure that will eventually all balance out (probably by the time you need to clean it again!) so if you get good even steady flow across the whole screen after cleaning, you're probably OK.
There are currently 2 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 2 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
