Any recommendations on color settings for NICREW 150W LED's?

zudo

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I have a 180 gallon 7 feet long, 30" deep, 20" wide reef tank that I am getting back into shape and could use some input as to what color settings for my three new NICREW 150W LED lights? These lights each have 72 LED that have six settings for blue and white (100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, 20%, 5%). I am mainly going to do soft easy corals but am open to eventually doing some hard corals possibly? These lights work great as they can easily light down to the sand eventhough my tank is 30" deep.

I mounted the lights using three narrow strips of 3/4" hardwood then laying two tracks of aluminum 1/2" tall by 1" wide strut and glued narrow strips of wood so the aluminum strut is held in place yet can easily be removed to give access, etc. The lights sit 1.25" above the top of the tank and I have the stock TruVue canopy and that works great as the canopy insulates any noise from the light fans and the open back of the canopy give enough air space there and above the lights to keep them from getting hot.

When I had the lights set at 100% blue and 80% white is was way too bright to me? Right now I have them set at 80% blue and 40% white but I really have no clue what the corals want? I appreciate your help.. right now I only have a small frag of: green star polyp, sun king psammocra, war coral favites, and lime green finger leather. The tank has a good amount of live rock about 65-70% the height of the tank and live sand.
 

Jedi1199

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If you can afford it.. The "Seneye reef" has a built in PAR meter. It also monitors pretty much all of your tank water parameters. Its about $200 on Amazon. It's a little pricy, yes, and requires a laptop to retrieve the data, but in the long run, I think it's worth it. It DOES require a new "sleeve" every month {about $12 each}, but IMO real time automatic water testing and alerts to your phone or email if things go sour, is worth the investment. Not to mention, no more messy inaccurate test kits/strips

Cheers,
Steve
 
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zudo

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If you can afford it.. The "Seneye reef" has a built in PAR meter. It also monitors pretty much all of your tank water parameters. Its about $200 on Amazon. It's a little pricy, yes, and requires a laptop to retrieve the data, but in the long run, I think it's worth it. It DOES require a new "sleeve" every month {about $12 each}, but IMO real time automatic water testing and alerts to your phone or email if things go sour, is worth the investment. Not to mention, no more messy inaccurate test kits/strips

Cheers,
Steve

Thanks, I will consider that. I would like to really know my real PAR levels.

I have tuned the blues even lower and are now around 60% and white 20%; I think since I am placing them only 1.25" above the top of the tank the light is much stronger than people hanging them, etc. higher above the tank with no lids. I have found that the light works fine going thru the plexi clear lids and the lights are not running hot and everything is quiet under the canopy.
 

kels64

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I have a 180 gallon 7 feet long, 30" deep, 20" wide reef tank that I am getting back into shape and could use some input as to what color settings for my three new NICREW 150W LED lights? These lights each have 72 LED that have six settings for blue and white (100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, 20%, 5%). I am mainly going to do soft easy corals but am open to eventually doing some hard corals possibly? These lights work great as they can easily light down to the sand eventhough my tank is 30" deep.

I mounted the lights using three narrow strips of 3/4" hardwood then laying two tracks of aluminum 1/2" tall by 1" wide strut and glued narrow strips of wood so the aluminum strut is held in place yet can easily be removed to give access, etc. The lights sit 1.25" above the top of the tank and I have the stock TruVue canopy and that works great as the canopy insulates any noise from the light fans and the open back of the canopy give enough air space there and above the lights to keep them from getting hot.

When I had the lights set at 100% blue and 80% white is was way too bright to me? Right now I have them set at 80% blue and 40% white but I really have no clue what the corals want? I appreciate your help.. right now I only have a small frag of: green star polyp, sun king psammocra, war coral favites, and lime green finger leather. The tank has a good amount of live rock about 65-70% the height of the tank and live sand.
I have the exact same lights and unfortunately spent months burning up my reef before I finally went to the store and rented a PAR meter. You will need to do that because you will find out that these lights are far more powerful than you believe they are just because they were inexpensive. I found out that in my 125 I had to turn the lights all the way down and also set the mountings up as far as possible from the water in order to get down to around 120 par at the bottom of my tank. Please do yourself a favor and make sure you rent a PAR meter. I thought the lights weren’t any good because my coral wasn’t growing but the truth of the matter was that the light was just too strong. Now I run my blue all the way up on the mixed channel and I run my white all the way down on the last setting. I turn both down all the way for my transition at early day and early evening and then all the way down low on my blue channel for dawn and dusk. These are great lights and everything in my tank is doing really fantastic now that I have turned them way down. Good luck!
 

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Spare time

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Thanks, I will consider that. I would like to really know my real PAR levels.

I have tuned the blues even lower and are now around 60% and white 20%; I think since I am placing them only 1.25" above the top of the tank the light is much stronger than people hanging them, etc. higher above the tank with no lids. I have found that the light works fine going thru the plexi clear lids and the lights are not running hot and everything is quiet under the canopy.


I would HIGHLY recommend NOT having it 1.25 inches above the water. This may fry coral in the center and starve any coral in the center and create far too little light towards the edges from the middle section and up. If you turn it down enough to not create a hotspot in the middle, the rest of the tank will be unusable except for low light softies as the par will be so low.

The cons of cheap LED's is that they need to be mounted high to avoid hotpots. This is where lights such as kessil and their engineering comes into play as they can be mounted closer to the water while still having decent spread.
 
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zudo

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Thanks Kels64 & Spare Time,

I have tuned them down to 40% blue and 5% white and the corals are liking that setting and doing very well. I also belong to Bay Area Reefers and as a supporting member they loan out their PAR meters for free so I guess I need to sign up on the wait list and get exact readings. Spare Time, I have 3 of the NICREWS and while 4 probably would be better and I might get another later, the spread is actually decent considering they are 1.25" off the top of the tank.

I need to put them there as I want to keep the canopy and this is in the living room so while the new trend appears to not have a canopy and some even have the top of the tank water open; that will NEVER be an option for our home. The tank needs to look nice and not bleed out light other than to the corals as that will impact our big screen, etc. and look like a science experiment, not to mention the evaporation that could damage tens of thousands in audio equipment.

I like the set up with these lights as they are silent, I still can keep the canopy, the corals are doing well, and they did not break the bank especially for the size of my tank being 7' long.
 

Spare time

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Thanks Kels64 & Spare Time,

I have tuned them down to 40% blue and 5% white and the corals are liking that setting and doing very well. I also belong to Bay Area Reefers and as a supporting member they loan out their PAR meters for free so I guess I need to sign up on the wait list and get exact readings. Spare Time, I have 3 of the NICREWS and while 4 probably would be better and I might get another later, the spread is actually decent considering they are 1.25" off the top of the tank.

I need to put them there as I want to keep the canopy and this is in the living room so while the new trend appears to not have a canopy and some even have the top of the tank water open; that will NEVER be an option for our home. The tank needs to look nice and not bleed out light other than to the corals as that will impact our big screen, etc. and look like a science experiment, not to mention the evaporation that could damage tens of thousands in audio equipment.

I like the set up with these lights as they are silent, I still can keep the canopy, the corals are doing well, and they did not break the bank especially for the size of my tank being 7' long.


The par meter should definitely help. Honestly that will probably solve any question you have.
 

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If you can afford it.. The "Seneye reef" has a built in PAR meter. It also monitors pretty much all of your tank water parameters. Its about $200 on Amazon. It's a little pricy, yes, and requires a laptop to retrieve the data, but in the long run, I think it's worth it. It DOES require a new "sleeve" every month {about $12 each}, but IMO real time automatic water testing and alerts to your phone or email if things go sour, is worth the investment. Not to mention, no more messy inaccurate test kits/strips

Cheers,
Steve
FYI you dont need to replace the sleeve for the PAR meter... otherwise this thing is a little toyish... but the most affordable light meter other than renting.
 

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