Ideal Settings for ViparSpectra 165w?

Ron Reefman · Nov 17, 2020

JoeP26 said:
Ah yep. I noticed that earlier. BRS made it sound like they did.

Don't take everything BRS says (or for that matter EcoTech) as gospel.

Lightspeed · Nov 17, 2020

Ron Reefman said:
Don't take everything BRS says (or for that matter EcoTech) as gospel.

Yeo, spot on. You are far better off to analyze the facts and do your own due diligence, looking at the spectrum wavelength pattern tells all.

Lightspeed · Nov 18, 2020

Heres a few pics of my display after the diode changes on channel 2, pretty happy so far but still ramping channel 2 and set at 10% in these pics. Apologies for the mobile pics, i keep spending my money on coral instead of a nikon micro 105mm VR. No negative reactions so far, but disco effect has come back in the pics, please excuse my algae, display is 3 months young.

JIsBusyReefing · Nov 18, 2020

Lightspeed said:
Heres a few pics of my display after the diode changes on channel 2, pretty happy so far but still ramping channel 2 and set at 10% in these pics. Apologies for the mobile pics, i keep spending my money on coral instead of a nikon micro 105mm VR. No negative reactions so far, but disco effect has come back in the pics, please excuse my algae, display is 3 months young.

Amazing! Really like this tank and the colors on the diodes. Nice job!

Lightspeed · Nov 18, 2020

JoeP26 said:
Amazing! Really like this tank and the colors on the diodes. Nice job!

Cant afford Radions bro, so best i can do for now.

JIsBusyReefing · Nov 18, 2020

Lightspeed said:
Cant afford Radions bro, so best i can do for now.

Totally get it. Premium lighting is expensive. My plan is to use the Vipars until they burn out and swap them out with AI Primes, since they're not much more expensive than the Vipars. Hopefully that won't be anytime soon. Lol!

Ron Reefman · Nov 19, 2020

JoeP26 said:
Totally get it. Premium lighting is expensive. My plan is to use the Vipars until they burn out and swap them out with AI Primes, since they're not much more expensive than the Vipars. Hopefully that won't be anytime soon. Lol!

The Viparspectra fixtures can grow healthy coral and look just as good as any of the expensive brand names. I wouldn't pay their price when you really don't get much more for your money. I took the least expensive of the 'high end' fixtures and I've been super happy with them. I also like the bigger, fully array of leds rather than the single source light and shadow of puck led fixtures.

telegraham · Feb 7, 2021

No weed, and no worries, but appreciate the advice.

Lightspeed said:
Omg, it seriously hurts my brain watching that guy, he needs to get off the weed baaadly.

telegraham · Feb 7, 2021

Thanks, maybe?

El_Negrito said:
Yea he's "special", for lack of a better word. Still the mod he suggested, changing the lenses, seems better than removing them all together. Or just removing the iner lenses and leaving the outer ones. This way you can lower the light and minimize hot spots in the middle.

telegraham · Feb 7, 2021

Peace, and be kind.

AbjectMaelstroM said:
Yeah he's a little...um yeah. I slugged through his video on the viparspectra's, while informative, his style just doesn't work for me so I won't be watching any more.

JIsBusyReefing · May 15, 2021

I figured I'd hop back in for an update. I decided to start over. Ran the 3 vipars for the past month with only the blues on at 30% and then used the Fluval Marine LED 3.0 48" strip at white 100%, blue at 100%, cyan 100%, purple 100%, and pink 50%. This was a bit dimmer looking than the prior settings using only vipars at 60% blues and 20% whites.

I'm not sure why, but my vipars look like there's just way too much white, even at 1%, compared to a lot of your guys' pics, which look amazing. I'm friends with my LFS people here in north Houston and had them over for dinner one night and they agreed that the white was way too much, so I just decided to rely on whites from the fluval strip.

However, certain corals over the past few months seemed like they were not growing much at all and one got pale in color. So, now I'm starting over with the vipars with blues at 30% and whites at 1%. The fluval strip is set to white 0%, blue 100%, cyan 100%, purple 100%, and pink 20%.

smol_reef · May 16, 2021

Mine also looks much whiter than everyone else's pictures. I'm currently running mine at 30% blue and 3% white, but I might try reducing the white even more

Uncle99 · May 16, 2021

With Vipars, anything over 1% will look white, maybe even yellowish, but that’s “full spectrum”.

Like myself, you have added an additional light source to get that more bluish colour and get corals pop.

See nothing wrong with that at all.

JIsBusyReefing · May 16, 2021

smol_reef said:
Mine also looks much whiter than everyone else's pictures. I'm currently running mine at 30% blue and 3% white, but I might try reducing the white even more

Yah it just seems like they packed way too many white LEDs in these units. I wish they wouldn't have and, instead, put more diversity of blues and purples in there. The green LEDs were a weird addition tbh.

JIsBusyReefing · May 16, 2021

Uncle99 said:
With Vipars, anything over 1% will look white, maybe even yellowish, but that’s “full spectrum”.

Like myself, you have added an additional light source to get that more bluish colour and get corals pop.

See nothing wrong with that at all.

Indeed. And the fluval strip actually has a much richer purple spectrum than the viparspectra even has, so I imagine I'm adding additional spectrum in there that wouldn't have otherwise been available from the vipars alone. The purple is actually comparable to what you would see from a black light.

Uncle99 · May 16, 2021

JoeP26 said:
Indeed. And the fluval strip actually has a much richer purple spectrum than the viparspectra even has, so I imagine I'm adding additional spectrum in there that wouldn't have otherwise been available from the vipars alone. The purple is actually comparable to what you would see from a black light.

Good mix, set the “colour” that makes your corals look great, and forget.

JIsBusyReefing · May 16, 2021

Uncle99 said:
Good mix, set the “colour” that makes your corals look great, and forget.

I actually removed the Fluval strip today and bumped the 3 vipars to 1% whites and 60% blues. Now, I'm getting the blue hue I was looking for. My only concern is if it's gonna be too much PAR for being a 2ft x 4ft x 31in tank with the lights mounted perpendicular 8in above the water with the lenses. Time will tell. So far so good. If things look like they're getting too much light, I suppose I'll just remove 1 of the units and only use 2.

Uncle99 · May 16, 2021

JoeP26 said:
I actually removed the Fluval strip today and bumped the 3 vipars to 1% whites and 60% blues. Now, I'm getting the blue hue I was looking for. My only concern is if it's gonna be too much PAR for being a 2ft x 4ft x 31in tank with the lights mounted perpendicular 8in above the water with the lenses. Time will tell. So far so good. If things look like they're getting too much light, I suppose I'll just remove 1 of the units and only use 2.

I think that’s fine. You may have to increase.
This is a 4x2x2 lit with two Visparspectra at 3 years old as a rough reference. 1% white, 90%blue.

JIsBusyReefing · May 16, 2021

Uncle99 said:
I think that’s fine. You may have to increase.
This is a 4x2x2 lit with two Visparspectra at 3 years old as a rough reference. 1% white, 90%blue.

Wow! What a beautiful tank. What does it look like now? Also, I have to take into account the third unit. I assume that adds more PAR and warrants a lower intensity setting, no?

Edit: Also how far off the water line are the units mounted?

telegraham · May 17, 2021

The VS could use some spectrum fattening. Given how easy it is to pull the board, it's DIYing time. Going to pull many of the whites, and swap with violet, and maybe a few more 470nm.