Examining the Kessil A360 Tuna Blue deeper than ever before! | BRStv Investigates

[SashimiTurtle]

Can anyone confirm if they tested the we and not just a w a360? He said w. Most people say we if it in fact is one.

As far as I know, there are only 2 A360 models. the A360W-E and the A360N-E. The "W" has the wide lens, and the "N" has the narrow lens. I'm sure BRS knows that the W is the much more popular model with the wide spread, so that's the one they tested.

http://www.kessil.com/aquarium/Saltwater_A360.php

 

[Tuffyyyyy]

Honestly, we have a couple of the Nuvo20's around the office here and I'd have to say that the A360 is the much better fit for full coverage with adequate PAR. Otherwise, (2x) A160s would be enough as well. Our marketing director, Valerie, has this exact tank with a single A360 on it!

-Randy

If I want to go Kessil on my IM40 what would you recommend? What light are you running on yours?

 

[randyBRS]

If I want to go Kessil on my IM40 what would you recommend? What light are you running on yours?

I just put a single A360 over my tank for a new video I'm doing and I'd have to say it seems it could easily do the trick. Personally though, I use a 4-bulb ATI T5 fixture with a Reef Brite LED strip attached to it.

-Randy

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

I just put a single A360 over my tank for a new video I'm doing and I'd have to say it seems it could easily do the trick. Personally though, I use a 4-bulb ATI T5 fixture with a Reef Brite LED strip attached to it.

-Randy

Lol.

 

[Newb73]

All of you talking about not enough PAR and adding supplements.

I run 3x Hydra 52s which i think have an advantage over the Radions as Ryan says, spread beats power and 52s have 4 pucks. I ALSO (seems like I am alone) run 3x Kessil A360s.

....not enough light? I run my 52s at like 40% to 50% (with simulated clouds all day which drops them to 10% like 25% of the time) and my A360s at like 10% to 20%.

People run way more PAR than they need and I agree with Kessil it's not a great measurement.

Agree w Ryan that more fixtures spaced out is better and I probably should have gone w 6 Hydra 26s and my 3 A360s.

Also in my case I run ozone so my water is crystal clear with minimal light loss.

 

[joekool]

It was a W-E . I should have been more clear : )

Thank you for confirming.

 

[joekool]

As far as I know, there are only 2 A360 models. the A360W-E and the A360N-E. The "W" has the wide lens, and the "N" has the narrow lens. I'm sure BRS knows that the W is the much more popular model with the wide spread, so that's the one they tested.

http://www.kessil.com/aquarium/Saltwater_A360.php

Actually there was just a w and n. They upgraded the lights with more power and then added the e. Kessil has been around longer than most people realize. When I bought some a few years ago they just upgraded them and there were the non (e) a360s still for sale.

Hope this helps.

 

[Crabs McJones]

I absolutely loved this video. Thank you so much for doing it. Great information and makes me love my kessils even more

 

[Newb73]

Actually there was just a w and n. They upgraded the lights with more power and then added the e. Kessil has been around longer than most people realize. When I bought some a few years ago they just upgraded them and there were the non (e) a360s still for sale.

Hope this helps.

Correct.

The W and Ns came first the WE came a bit later.

I ended up with 2 Ws and a WE.

 

[oreo54]

Maybe someone could clear this thought of mine up..

Kessil logic has a cost. What I mean by that is the light is basically a 2 channel design
and if one want to maintain power going from ch1 full..to 50/50.. to ch 2 full that means that you are under-utilizing the lights "potential"..

In other words it will never run both channels at 100%.. Can't..
To make it a bit clearer think of this.. When you shift it to 100% ch 1 and ch 2 is off as you blend you have no choice but to go to decreasing output on one channel by increasing output on the other..

In other word both channels will never run at 100% together..
At a 50/50 blend each channel is running at 1/2 of its potential..To keep it at 100%..

Just find this interesting...Wonder if the cooling could handle both channels at 100%

 

[Newb73]

Maybe someone could clear this thought of mine up..

Kessil logic has a cost. What I mean by that is the light is basically a 2 channel design
and if one want to maintain power going from ch1 full..to 50/50.. to ch 2 full that means that you are under-utilizing the lights "potential"..

In other words it will never run both channels at 100%.. Can't..
To make it a bit clearer think of this.. When you shift it to 100% ch 1 and ch 2 is off as you blend you have no choice but to go to decreasing output on one channel by increasing output on the other..

In other word both channels will never run at 100% together..
At a 50/50 blend each channel is running at 1/2 of its potential..To keep it at 100%..

Just find this interesting...Wonder if the cooling could handle both channels at 100%

Is it really 50/50 at 100%?

Either way, Kessils have a preponderance of blue which most PAR meters underestimate so if it's 50/50 you are probably measuring all of the white but only about half of the blue, meaning you are only reading 75% of the true light.

Dial the blue up and your reading becomes even less accurate.

 

[oreo54]

Doesn't have anything to do w/ PAR really...
Besides a good PAR meter reads from 400nm to 700nm relatively equally..

Just has to do w/ power (power drives the photons regardless of wavelength).
Say ch1 is at 90W ch2 is at 0 watts..
Now as you turn the dial to change the tone BUT keeping equal power you have to add watts to ch2 while subtracting watts from ch1
Half way on the dial and you have 50w ch1 50w ch 2..until you turn ch2 on full then you have 0W ch1 100w ch2.....

you could tweak it a bit I suppose but still doesn't change the fact that ch 1 and 2 can "take" 100W.. yet both can never be driven at 100W due
to the need to maintain equality of output..

another example.. 2 glasses of water .. glass A is full, glass b is empty..
you can't "add" water so you pour from glass a to b till glass b is full.. Now glass a is empty.
no water (power/photons) added to the system i.e equal all the way through..

BTW how "off" do you think a PAR meter would be?

not perfectly accurate but you get the idea..

 

[Newb73]

Doesn't have anything to do w/ PAR really...
Besides a good PAR meter reads from 400nm to 700nm relatively equally..

Just has to do w/ power (power drives the photons regardless of wavelength).
Say ch1 is at 90W ch2 is at 0 watts..
Now as you turn the dial to change the tone BUT keeping equal power you have to add watts to ch2 while subtracting watts from ch1
Half way on the dial and you have 50w ch1 50w ch 2..until you turn ch2 on full then you have 0W ch1 100w ch2.....

you could tweak it a bit I suppose but still doesn't change the fact that ch 1 and 2 can "take" 100W.. yet both can never be driven at 100W due
to the need to maintain equality of output..

another example.. 2 glasses of water .. glass A is full, glass b is empty..
you can't "add" water so you pour from glass a to b till glass b is full.. Now glass a is empty.
no water (power/photons) added to the system i.e equal all the way through..

BTW how "off" do you think a PAR meter would be?

not perfectly accurate but you get the idea..

Are PAR recommendations based on older tech which has a lot of light in the unusable wavelengths comparable to a light that might register lower in total but has 100% of its light in the usable areas?

IE....the magenta and blue grow lights seem to grow chateo way faster than the old 6500k lights even though they appear dimmer and could register lower????

 

[oreo54]

IE....the magenta and blue grow lights seem to grow chateo way faster than the old 6500k lights even though they appear dimmer and could register lower????

Appearing dimmer is a matter of what the human eye is sensitive to.......
Why green/yellow heavy lights appear brighter to the eye:

IF they register lower they are lower in photon output (400-700nm range)..has nothing to do w/ apparent brightness..

Conversely you can have a lamp high in violet and UV (keep it around 400nm) and see it as real dull, w/ low PAR but really high PAR due to the artificial cutoff at 400nm.
BUT this is a very specific case..
Few if any lights produce THAT much below 400nm to "fool" a PAR meter..

Certain wavelengths can be "favored" for certain things but overall.. all photons regardless of "color" effect photosynthesis
There are variations but, again, a PAR meter is blind to qualitative effects and assumes 1 photon of (x) nm = 1 photon of (y) nm...
http://www.aquayee.com/posts/415
http://slideplayer.com/slide/9012554/

In other words .. a separate topic..no visible light is "unusable"............
Going to extremes a pure green light has the same PAR as a pure blue light (if of equal photon output) yet growth would be quite different..so a PAR meter is, in a sense, ineffective here..but that is an extreme..
White light always has a large component of blue/red/green. Has to to be white.
Even more extreme w/ white LED since the photon pump is blue in most cases, violet (blue by another name) in some.

tubes use RGB phosphors for white stimulated mostly by UV photons.

a350 chip. drawn square is "UV"..

 

[iemsparticus]

Maybe someone could clear this thought of mine up..

Kessil logic has a cost. What I mean by that is the light is basically a 2 channel design
and if one want to maintain power going from ch1 full..to 50/50.. to ch 2 full that means that you are under-utilizing the lights "potential"..

In other words it will never run both channels at 100%.. Can't..
To make it a bit clearer think of this.. When you shift it to 100% ch 1 and ch 2 is off as you blend you have no choice but to go to decreasing output on one channel by increasing output on the other..

In other word both channels will never run at 100% together..
At a 50/50 blend each channel is running at 1/2 of its potential..To keep it at 100%..

Just find this interesting...Wonder if the cooling could handle both channels at 100%

I get your point, but your logic would apply to any LED light on the market that has a master "power" channel, and any amount of color changing capability.

The way that you need to think about it is "What spectral blend do I want, and what intensity do I want that color blend at?" For a Kessil A360WE, the spectral blend is controlled by one knob... you use the knob to tell the light fixture which LED diodes to turn on. On something like a Radion, you have loads more control over which LED diodes to turn on, and what percentage of each, but you are still telling the light which diodes to turn on. Obviously, the more diodes you turn on, the more power overall the light will put out, and certainly the opposite is true. But once you get the spectral blend you want, you then turn the master power up or down to get the PAR output you want with your given spectral range. This is why, even with Radions, using AB+ significantly brings down PAR output - but it doesn't bring it down to the point where the light can't grow corals. It's still plenty. Same with the Kessils.

So I get what you're saying, but that's basically the entire point of LEDs...

 

[Newb73]

So the arguments here seem to be claiming A) Any super bright light even in yellow and green is great for corals as long as they are bright and 2) No such thing as too much led PAR right up to and past the point where your coral practically bursts into flames...and a kessil can certainly burn a coral to death, yet apparantly....still isn't enough power.

 

[oreo54]

I get your point, but your logic would apply to any LED light on the market that has a master "power" channel, and any amount of color changing capability.

so I get what you're saying, but that's basically the entire point of LEDs...

well yes and no.. To apply Kessil logic to say another 2 channel light you start them at 50% and adj accordingly. Adding and subtracting from each concurrently..
Yet that light has the ability to run each channel at 100%.. basically doubling light output..

So basically Kessils are designed to run full at 1/2 power...
Since each channel is more than capable at running at 100%.........If the heatsink/heat transfer could take it is another story..

Not really any different than cutting driver current in 1/2 by replacing the driver for any other light but of course that would be truly physically limiting..
The design might just work fine w/ 2X the amps..
So it's not like Kessil "wrong" or anything.. It just is....

As I said more of a curiosity point..

Obviously, the more diodes you turn on, the more power overall the light will put out

Too simplistic, need to specify that current isn't decreased..
Generally speaking turning on 2x more diodes but at 1/2 the current will be equal to 1/2 the diodes w/ 2x the current

Kessil logic..

 

[oreo54]

So the arguments here seem to be claiming A) Any super bright light even in yellow and green is great for corals as long as they are bright and 2) No such thing as too much led PAR right up to and past the point where your coral practically bursts into flames...and a kessil can certainly burn a coral to death, yet apparantly....still isn't enough power.

none of that is what I'm saying...........

 

[Fitzreefer]

I have been reading along and some of what I'm reading from this post seems to be contradictory to what I and other posts I've read are getting directly from Kessil. I quote here from an email I received, "The A360s are designed to always deliver the best spectrum to your corals, regardless of the color setting, so it is really the intensity that is key to coral growth and coloration.". Which I have translated to mean that changes to the color channel have no impact on the light output set by the intensity channel or actual spectrum for that matter. I also translate that the color setting is just for human visual aesthetics. I could be translating this incorrectly. If that is the case I am not the only one. As info, I am running a standard 75 G mixed reef, SPS dominant. Since watching the BRS vid, I slowly bumped my 2 A360WEs to 100 intensity over a few week. Color I keep relatively low, more blue. So far I believe I'm seeing good results on growth since the bump, still TBD long term. Anyway, I'm just throwing this in there for discussion, as I am still trying to educate myself on this subject. Very confusing and cryptic sometimes.

 

[Fitzreefer]

Also, just a side note, I moved my lights up to 8.25" over the water from 6". I think that gave the WEs more spread.