Increasing brightness without increasing PAR

PranK · Mar 11, 2022

Hi All,

I'm running 3 x Radion XR30 Gen 2 Pro over my Red Sea 425XL (~100 gallons i think). It's predominantly SPS with some LPS on the sand.

I know these are old lights and they've served me well, but I'm considering upgrading to 3 x Gen 5 XR15's but I had some q's first.

1. Will I be able to make the tank brighter without bringing PAR up too high? This seems an odd question, I know, but with my Gen 2's I have them at 75% intensity which is around 450 - 500 PAR on the top rocks and ~200 at some of the lower levels. But if I drop the intensity down the tank is noticeably dim and not great to look at. What I want is a really nice and bright tank that isn't cooking my corals. I'm assuming the light will just be much better with the Gen 5's and this will be less of an issue.

2. Is this a sensible upgrade? Dropping from XR30 to XR15 seems ok as there is more spread (I think) from the Gen 5's. Inappropriate Reefer (https://www.youtube.com/c/InappropriateReefer) is running 3 of these over his much wider tank and they look great.

I can't afford 3 x XR30's (~$AUD1300 per fixture) but I could get the XR15's (~$AUD700). If there's something else in my budget that will do the job (Maybe some AI lights?) then happy to consider them.

Any opinions would be much appreciated. This is a big expense and I don't want to hurry it.

Thanks,

Christian

Lasse · Mar 11, 2022

You say brighter - do you mean a whiter light? If so - there is a problem but there is also a solution IMO.

You can get a whiter (brighter) light (in the second case - are you tricking your brain into thinking that light is whiter) in two ways.

1) more phosphorous coated LEDs or higher intensity in the ones you already have- white, bright light if the Kelvin is above 6000. If you go this path - PAR will rise a lot. You will also rise the the intensity in the Lumen window (the wavelengths your eyes is optimized for), hence dazzle away the weak light sources from the fluorescence of the corals

2) A very seldom used trick in reefing that give you an imagination of a whiter light with lesser disadvantages than higher intensity of "white" LEDs. The trick is to use weak RGB LEDs that give you both green and red photons

I have try to explain this in a post in my build thread

Build Thread - Lasses Dream Build

As Paul B use to say - healthy fish spawn Sincerely Lasse

www.reef2reef.com

I have never try but I think that rather cheap RGB strip will change your "brightness" a lot and change the way you see your reflecting colours of your fish and corals - and not miss the fluorescent colours from your heavy blue tank. It will change the "white" feeling - but not put in a lot of new PAR

Sincerely Lasse

Bpb · Mar 11, 2022

I can tell you my tank is visually brighter if I set my channels equal, rather than running a more ab+ type program, even when using a par meter to set actual intensity levels. You can get it visually brighter but at the cost of running those blues full tilt.

Honestly I’ve not seen much difference at all in coral growth of a white heavy spectrum vs the blue heavy ab+. I know on paper the blue heavy is photosynthetically more efficient but in practice, results have been negligible in how different they are. As long as par levels are where you want

oreo54 · Mar 11, 2022

Sciency stuff on " brightness".

Brightness and Night/Day Sensitivity

"On paper" one of the best supplements to increase both brightness and whiteness ( better color rendition) is with pcamber and lime leds

Basically your rgb strips sans blue .

Lime alone ( wide band more efficient green)
has,since their availability, been used as a brightner.

Lime LED, Wow!

Just a few comments on Lime LED's. I added one to my DIY setup last night & holy crap what a big difference in brightness! Just made the display more bright & crisp. I have the OCW, NW, RB, HV mix, just a small array of 11 LED's and I added 1 lime to the total. All the hype is true. While...

www.nano-reef.com

Mercury based lights have a natural green spike thus a visual brightner advantage.
Even actinics. See 550 spike and a bit of amber.

Any added visual photons is added par.
Par/pur arguments aside.
Increase red/ green, decrease blue for equal " par".

Model – Radion XR30w G2
LEDs

• White: 8 Cree XT-E Cool White (5W each)
• Red: 4 Osram Oslon SSL Hyper Red (3W each)
• Green: 4 Cree XP-E Green (3W each)
• Blue: 8 Cree XP-E Blue (3W each)
• Royal Blue: 8 Cree XT-E Royal Blue (5W each).

Crank the green and a bit on the hyper red, decrease blue .
Leave white alone.
See if you like it.

PranK · Mar 13, 2022

Wow, some great info in here.

I had never thought of bringing up the green and reds, all the configs for Radions that I have seen have the green and red channels really low.

I'll definitely experiment with this.

I did find a cheap G5 XR15 that I bought. I plan to replace one of the 3 G2's with it and just see how it goes (especially with suggested changes in here).

Thanks!