dilemmas dilemmas, so last night I was redesigning the scrubber & I thought why not try doing 3 reds and 2 blues on each side using dimmers. Tthis way I get the reds in the blues the proper spectrum and it wouldn't be overly bright unless you suggest just leave it that brightness & see how it goes and dim according to color of algae.
As Santa Monica points out, higher intensity at a lower schedule is better than lower intensity at a longer schedule. So I would keep them all running full power but keep the time it is on to under 9 hours at a time, probably end up being closer to 6 on/6 off schedule with that lighting.
Sounds great.
You know, I wish there was a RGB that would work for us.
LOL, well, the G part of RGB is useless, so 1/3 of the LED would be wasted light. Then the blues and reds are usually not the correct spectrum, blues are usually normal blue (475nm), not royal blue (455nm) and reds are usually normal red (630nm), not "Far Red" which is what 660nm is called.
I know, like I said I wish there was one. I would happily not use the green if only the red and blue were right for us. Think of it the two colors in one nice package.
Ya, if I agree, it seems it would be really easy to make a Tri-LED star that contains 2 660's and 1 455 per star. That would be so great if they made one like that.
Now all we have to do is build the market for it
Just a note here, all the 1W LED grow bars have their LEDs 1/2 to 3/4" on center, but they are also mounting them on a PCB versus individual stars. I haven't looked into it much, but do they make smaller stars for the 1W LEDs?
I agree though on the mixed chip, I know Osram has a 3-up 660 chip so you could use 2 of those for each 1 455 (or actually 425/435 violet) and that mix would work pretty well.
I've looked at 1W ers and they are on the same board as 3W. I'm also dealing with a tiny Scrubber. 7"W x 2.75"H so the problem I believe is that if I'm running only three LEDs per side then I get one 660 at either end and a 455 in the middle and I'm not sure the spread will be even at 1.5" away from the screen. I also don't want to get any wider on the design. The tank is only 16*16 & 18H 18G
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