Anyone still prefer the 10K look, or even 6.5K? What's with all the windex colored tanks?

[Vette67]

Both your pics look great. Love them both, tough choice lol.

Yeah, it's preference... There's one coral frag I have that I thought was purple. Then under the 14,000K lights, I realized it was green with purple tips. Oddly enough, the 14,000K seemed to bring out the other colors in that particular frag. But as long as everything still grows under the 14,000K as well as it did under the 10,000K, then I'll stick with the 14,000K for a while. Maybe another 20 years....

 

[ISFNick]

maybe i like the windex look dawg

 

[naterealbig]

maybe i like the windex look dawg

Tru tru no doubt

 

[danieyella]

I have mine windex blue for about 1.5 hours morning and night but much more white during the day. My phone however thinks it's strictly blue light all the time.... I blame it on only having leds, i've been considering hybridizing lately

 

[Dr. Jim]

So happy I found this thread. Thanks OP!!

I'm brand new to the hobby, first tank has been up almost a month. I'm prepping for some easy corals soon, but have no idea how to achieve the "daytime" light look with these G5 Pros. It looks like windex to me - I just chose the preset template for "LPS/Softies". The other "AB+" template makes it even more blue. Can someone please help me to tone down the blue?? Sounds like thats an okay thing to do as far as keeping corals alive and thriving, please correct me if I'm wrong?

I have a WB 100.3 (3x2 display) running two Radion G5 Pros. Any help adjusting this blue look would be greatly appreciated!!

I have two G5 XR15 Radions. I set them to the AB+ setting because that is the setting that Echotech determined is best for SPS, so its tough to argue with that. But, I too, don't like the amount of blue so I turn up the Cool White from 24% to 34% and that gives me a satisfactory amount of white, and I don't feel like I will be throwing off the "growth benefits" of the AB+ setting all that much.
I've used halides for 24 years and just recently started using LED's as an experiment. I definitely prefer the crisp color of the halides, but there are so many benefits of LED's that I'm hoping the corals will grow and look as well as they did for me with the halides. If not, I'll be going back to halides.

 

[Jack Ravensbergen]

My Philips coral care full leds run at 45%/55% white/bleu
i dove a lot in the red sea and these settings are about the same.
Grtz Jack

 

[tnyr5]

My previous reef, lit by a single 400w Ushio 14k and four 24w t5 actinics

 

[Da8]

Each must prefer its spectrum, but for me is nicer the whiter look.


Fluorescent show less but the whole colors do more.

Check my build to know what I mean

 

[Ardeus]

The shimmer is as important to the way a tank looks as the color temperature.

Shimmer is the product of the type of light source and surface agitation.

Even with point lights (dense led matrix or HQI), if you have pumps or the return lines near the surface, you get epileptic fit inducing shimmer.

I have yet to see a reef tank with natural looking shimmer. There are too many glitter lines and they move too fast.

With T5, you get of course the absence of shimmer.

Combining both types of lighting, we get the best and the worst of both worlds, but it's probably the best we can get at this point.

 

[Lasse]

My tank look like this - rather much a hue of white

​

However my spectra looks like this

15 000 K and a lot of blue. How is this possible. The answer is that my fixture (GHL Mitras Bar 2) content RGB LEDs

It looks therefore a lot whiter than the Kelvin indicate. Our eyes/brain trick us

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Katrina71]

My tank look like this - rather much a hue of white

​

However my spectra looks like this

15 000 K and a lot of blue. How is this possible. The answer is that my fixture (GHL Mitras Bar 2) content RGB LEDs

It looks therefore a lot whiter than the Kelvin indicate. Our eyes/brain trick us

Sincerely Lasse

I'm going to try and mimic your spectrum in the new tank. I also prefer a natural look.

 

[Lasse]

You need RGB LEDs for this - they do not change the spectra so much - but the change for your eyes is huge

Sincerely Lasse

 

[homer1475]

Windex tanks is the reason I run T5's. While I personally don't mind them, it's your tank, do what you like.

With that said, if you do like a windex tank, for the love of god, turn some whites on when taking pics.

 

[Lasse]

Windex tanks is the reason I run T5's. While I personally don't mind them, it's your tank, do what you like.

With that said, if you do like a windex tank, for the love of god, turn some whites on when taking pics.

Modern "white" aquarium T5 use the RGB trick

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Admann]

I have 2-Giesseman Tropic 6500K and 2-Coral Blue+ in my 48" hybrid fixture with 2- A360 WEs flanking a single diffuser equipped XR15G4 PRO. I love the look so far. Can't wait to put water in the tank. Never will be windexy but I prefer the 10-14000K look. I like the natural glow in the daylight not in the dark effect. Just my preference.

 

[tamanning]

I thought the idea was to simulate the ocean. all of the research ive done indicates the corals ive got live a depth 20 to 25 feet and would see a spectrum of light. I'm not running actenic but I am running blue plus . My fish and corals at least seem to be happy.

 

[Silent]

I put a blue filter on my 14k lights for the cool windex look. BTW, does my yellow tang look a little dark? Lol

 

[Mark]

Some of you asked for my aip file from the AI's. I run two 52HD's and one 26HD over a 5x2' tank.
AIP file

Realistically, these values are irrelevant, since you could have a shallower/deeper tank or more/less lights. I'm also slowly increasing the reds and greens to see how that plays out, so please use at your own risk. I quite like the look with the reds at same intensity as the whites, but I know there has been some discussion around reds impacting corals negatively. If you adopt my schedule, you may want to reduce the reds/greens to avoid that downside. Proceed at your own risk. I do not have a PAR meter to measure the impact of my changes.

As you can see, I have some windex/glow-in-the-dark dawn dusk phases, and then the white/green/red gets boosted around noon. I also taper off the blues more than the white/green/red around 7pm. This is to start bringing down PAR sooner. I have a pretty long light cycle to maximize enjoyment, but didn't want to subject the coral to high PAR the whole time. It's also a nice window of time where the tank looks even less blue. Then at the 10pm mark, the whites finally drop low enough to get some glow in the dark dusk to see the phosphorescent colors again. So yeah, I get to enjoy both daylight and blue depending on timing.

FWIW, the noon setting reminds me of an Ushio 14k, or even a Phoenix 14K on an HQI magnetic ballast(the E-Ballasts made 14k bulbs way to blue for me). I'd like to say it's close to a 10K halide with strong Actinic supplementation, but I feel that's not quite true. LED's do a much better job bringing out the phosphorescent colors and glow.

Here are my orange herpolitha's at morning/night, when the white light is absent:

 

[aquaman67]

With LEDs the Kelvin numbers are pretty irrelevant now IMO.
I’m using RedSea’s 90 watt ReefLED light in my tank with the blue set to 90% and the white on 70%.
What degree Kelvin is that? Who knows.

With LEDs you can do any color you want. When I first got my light I played around with the settings. The daylight look was definitely not for me. Everything looked washed out and too brown.

I found the custom color I like and went with it. One think I like about the RedSea light is that you can’t adjust the light to a point where it will hurt the corals.

 

[SMSREEF]

Some of you asked for my aip file from the AI's. I run two 52HD's and one 26HD over a 5x2' tank.
AIP file

Realistically, these values are irrelevant, since you could have a shallower/deeper tank or more/less lights. I'm also slowly increasing the reds and greens to see how that plays out, so please use at your own risk. I quite like the look with the reds at same intensity as the whites, but I know there has been some discussion around reds impacting corals negatively. If you adopt my schedule, you may want to reduce the reds/greens to avoid that downside. Proceed at your own risk. I do not have a PAR meter to measure the impact of my changes.

As you can see, I have some windex/glow-in-the-dark dawn dusk phases, and then the white/green/red gets boosted around noon. I also taper off the blues more than the white/green/red around 7pm. This is to start bringing down PAR sooner. I have a pretty long light cycle to maximize enjoyment, but didn't want to subject the coral to high PAR the whole time. It's also a nice window of time where the tank looks even less blue. Then at the 10pm mark, the whites finally drop low enough to get some glow in the dark dusk to see the phosphorescent colors again. So yeah, I get to enjoy both daylight and blue depending on timing.

FWIW, the noon setting reminds me of an Ushio 14k, or even a Phoenix 14K on an HQI magnetic ballast(the E-Ballasts made 14k bulbs way to blue for me). I'd like to say it's close to a 10K halide with strong Actinic supplementation, but I feel that's not quite true. LED's do a much better job bringing out the phosphorescent colors and glow.

Here are my orange herpolitha's at morning/night, when the white light is absent:

Thank you for the info!