Why do you think its one sided?
You my friend have touched on a loaded subject. I am a diy person all the way. Most things in our hobby are very expensive if you just mention it's for saltwater the price doubles. I've had great results from t5s and that was is a plant growing I got on ebay for 20 bucks and free shipping. I bought two 2 foot fixtures with two ballasts each so I could divide the blues from the whites. I ended up with 8 2 foot tubes instead of 4 4foot tubes. But it cost me a lot less and works great.
I have a cheap nicrew led light around 85-90 par could I add the orphek or3 light bars to my existing led lights or would it be better to run those orphek or3 lights by themselves. Thanks again
My profuse apologies to the OP if I put this thread into a bit of a power drift going around this curve,
I understand the angst topics like this can cause. I don't even have a pickup truck. I do, however, have a Harley. It serves my purposes well, too. I also built some Suzukis in the past, a GS-1000 and a GS-750E (from scratch, a road rocket...). I still like my Harley, now that I remember that I'm still mortal. I also like my '76 Kubota L245DT, but I live on a small farm so it comes in mighty handy.
Some folks mistake these threads as a big-bucks bass tournament and drop the lures off the back of the boat, if you "catch" my "drift".
I read, and even understand some things about physics (although the new stuff on travel faster than light speed is just now sinking in...) and photons being photons (h/t to Dana!) and the reactions some aquatic lifeforms have to some of these photon-thingies. Lotsa research papers out there to read and not nearly enough time...
I'm on the forum to get ideas from other reefkeepers and hopefully provide some insight into what went into my decision matrix for my current reef while preventing some problems for folks here that haven't been keeping aquatic critters for a number of, uh, um, decades, to pick up a few ideas themselves for success.
Background: This 300 gallon reef is a 360' walk around viewable from all sides. The reef itself is built from the visible back left corner to the right front corner, with another pillar on the back right corner. Lots of caves and arches formed by rock and coral. When making decisions about things like lighting, filtration, food, cooling, heating, and all that, we should make the decisions on our individual circumstances and requirements.
The view from the left end:
I needed a lighting solution that provided the following, and it took me a while to get there:
1. Could provide enough light to support acropora under 27" of water without overpowering the planned top of the reef, but down the entire length of the reef as well. So I needed kind of a uniform PAR all the down, within, say 100-150 PAR.
2. Able to keep the temperature in the living within reasonable limits without buying the executive staff of the local power company a fleet of new limousines (they have a enough already, frankly) with my summer air conditioning bill. This also goes in the category of maintaining a good relationship with my significant other.
3. Able to run off of an average 15amp circuit in the house, something the six(!) 250W metal halides (@2amp per ballast) I converted from had difficulty doing if anything else was plugged into the circuit and switched on.
4. Gotta look pretty good - highly subjective from somebody that spent a major portion of their life floating with a mask and snorkel...
So, I began my LED journey. I went through a few iterations and even some DIY to get to what I wanted, and ended up with an array of moderately inexpensive ViparSpectra to provide the smooth, broad coverage meeting minimal lighting requirements 27" down. I removed the stock lenses and affixed a dispersion panel (95% transmissivity) to increase the light spread. I'm running at about 250 PAR across the entire bottom of the aquarium at about 50% across blue and white channels. The top of the reef sees about 350-400 PAR across the length and width.
The array supports zooxanthellae down there, and the coral grows quickly and well -
I supplement these with an array of six Kessil A360WEs - a more expensive option, but this covered two bases. They made things "look good" by providing that extra kick of point-source lighting that produces the "glitter lines" under water. They also add another 150 or so PAR during the "high noon" part of the day, about five hours mid-day an extra dose of photons is chucked into the vat. I think many of my longer-limbed acros really appreciate this and tend to stretch out a bit more toward the surface. The shorter-branched varieties tend to pull in their outer polyps to lower the surface area exposed.
I hope this helps the OP a bit in their decision, or perhaps anyone else that doesn't doze off while reading it.
Cheers,
Ray
@shred5 - Here's a link to the manufacturer's site.
The product line you'll be looking for is SatinIce Light Diffusion.
if you take a look at how they make this product, you'll see why they are worth the time and effort.
They no longer sell direct to the public, but you should be able to track down someone near you to order via the site.
There is a tradeoff between opacity and blending. The less light transmission, the more blending. I threw the dice and 95% transmissivity worked out great for me with some inexpensive black boxes. I had removed the stock 90' lenses from the LEDs and I use a number of Neodymium magnets to hold the diffuser sheet in place. I had the sheet cut to fit the entire LED surface area plus some overlap to the metal case for the magnets. The result between the native 120' lenses (Epistar LEDs, if I remember correctly) in combination with the diffuser lens produces a pretty solid band of light with no discernable spotlight effects from individual LEDs - even at a short distance.
If I ever put up a build thread for this reef here on R2R, I have some good shots of the entire process. Of course, the build has gone on for nearly eight years now with this reef...
Hope this helps. Drop me a note if you need anything else.
Cheers,
Ray
Acrylics are pretty transparent to all visible wavelengths so shouldn't lose any particular band.You shouldn't need much more than .060" inches (1/16") to diffuse the light. Again, if you're using a more powerful light source, you could go with a thicker diffuser. I'd keep an eye on cooling the T5s with a diffuser, too. Perhaps get some air pushing across the surface of the tubes with the lens in place.
Give it a shot with a couple different thicknesses and opacities, and use a PAR meter to gauge your results. If you have a spectrometer handy I would love to see or hear about the results as well.
Cheers,
Ray
