*Reef Breeders Photon v2 and T5 installation, testing, and review*

[reeferfoxx]

I don't have a large tank, but on my nano I really like my black box. Gives me the ability to customize diodes and lenses. Here are some crappy cell phone pics to kind of see what I've done.. The goal was to increase spread, reduce disco, and maintain shimmer. In the end the light spread increased about 3 inches on the right and left side, eliminated disco tremendously, and achieved a nice warm white shimmer within the blue spectrum.



Again, cellphone pics aren't really showing what my eyes are seeing. Picture color is off a little too.

 

[jason2459]

Nice! Changing the lenses out on these are really easy. The Photon v2 are nice looking but I think are still considered black boxes. I believe evergrow makes them and Reef Breeders customizes the LEDs used. I think they did an excellent job at that too. Except the white is pretty low Kelvin and seems yellowish to me. I have them turn down quite a bit. But once I get to play around with the blue+ and actinic T5s I may change my mind on that. Will see.

How high up do you have that fixture? That layout looks very similar to the Ocean Revive one I had which are evergrow too. The Red and Green drove me nuts but I could only get them about 7.5" off the water in my canopy. If I could have gotten them higher up that may have helped. Also the fixtures I had only had 2 channels so I couldn't turn the red and greens down at all separate from the whites so they were at 100% too along with every other LED.

 

[reeferfoxx]

My light is 12 inches above water level. I made a thread on what I changed here.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/the-modified-black-box-thread.283942/page-2

 

[jason2459]

Relevant question on T5 PAR spread.

Great information here Jason. I'm working to re-light my 180 with LED's and T5's so I enjoy the reading. Did you happen to get PAR measurements in the corner of the tank with just T5's? I'm looking at flipping your strategy a little (LED's down the center, 2x T5's front and back) and wondering if the 5 foot T5's over a six foot tank is going to drop off left/right really bad or be fine due to the spread.

Lets see if this makes any sense

With just the dual 80watt coral plus which are themselves slightly less then 5'

Location : PAR

On the sand
Center of the tank 80
Along Front glass center 59
Along Front glass end corner 29
End of tank along Side glass middle 38

Half way up the tank
Center of tank 100
Center along front glass 60
Along Front glass end corner 25
End of tank along side glass 40[/QUOTE]

that makes total sense thank you VERY much for the information, it is very helpful.

 

[jason2459]

Amazing what a change lighting can make. Everything is really starting to look better.

Cyano is getting cut back

Fiji yellow is starting to look fuller like the mushrooms

Bubble tips are filling out again now that they aren't stretching up and coloring up well

The branching sps and and lps on the sand are still pale

And WOW! The 5watt Cree Royal Blues are awesome! I didn't notice this before either because I missed it or my anemones are REALLY starting to color up.

I have never seen my Bubble tips glow like this under blue lights. The Anemones are ready for night time and they do some funny stuff sometimes. Usually though not anywhere as full as during the day and sometimes all puffed up at the base.

This is with 1% Channel 3 Royal Blues only. And it's even more impressive in person!

The selection of LEDs used in the Photon V2s is one of the reasons I went with them over other fixtures in this price range as well. They are basically high end fixture type LEDs. No Epi or Bridgelux LEDs. Epi being slightly better of the two but the Cree, Osram, and Semi in their specific wavelengths are better. From what I've researched at least.

And right now I'm very happy. [emoji4]

 

[jason2459]

Posted this in the wrong thread so copying it over here.

RBTAs keep looking better and better every day. But something that I didn't think was having any issues actually look the best I've ever seen them.

My red mushrooms. They seem fuller or something. Not so much a color change.

Par right there was low 80s with no T5s. But I think that's before I went up 2 more %. I have to stop taking par readings. I'm getting overloaded with data. It's been addicting.

I don't plan to increase intensity at all anymore but get my bulb/led spectrum figured out. Then I'll get more par numbers. For now I think I'm good there.

 

[jason2459]

Relevant question on T5 PAR spread.



Lets see if this makes any sense

With just the dual 80watt coral plus which are themselves slightly less then 5'

Location : PAR

On the sand
Center of the tank 80
Along Front glass center 59
Along Front glass end corner 29
End of tank along Side glass middle 38

Half way up the tank
Center of tank 100
Center along front glass 60
Along Front glass end corner 25
End of tank along side glass 40

[/QUOTE]


I got my ATI Blue+ and True Actinics in and finalized on Blue+ and True Actinic. 2 Blue+ bulbs was to much windex blue for me. The True Actinic seems to tone it down.

The Blue+ actually brought up the PAR a bit. The Coral+ bulbs were only about 2 months old so don't think par would have dropped on them.

On the Sand Par center of tank is 85 and half way up 110.

 

[jason2459]

Played around with the settings and will see how the tank reacts. I ilike the colors. so I'm happy but lets see if everything else is. I'm gong to set the Seneye in the tank and get readings through out the day tomorrow.

One of my favorite time settins right now is amazingly with the white channel mixed with the royal blue channels at 10am and 10pm. The warm white with the deep royal blue is very nice looking. The warm whites help balance the blue+ bulbs too during the hours the T5's are on.

Here's the settings I have logged right now. Ramping up to a peak at 4pm and back down mirroring the previous hours. I'm just shooting from the hip here and seeing what happens. :beer:

Channel 1 Deep Red Osram 3watt 660nm
Channel 2 Green Semi LED 3watt 520nm
Channel 3 Royal Blue Cree XT-E 5watt 450nm
Channel 4 White Cree XP-E 5watt 5500K
Channel 5 Cool Blue Cree XP-E 3watt 480nm
Channel 6 Violet Semi LED 3watt 420nm

Dual Hamilton Aruba Sun V w/ 80watt ATI down the middle
True Actinic + Blue+

Lunar Lights on from 12pm to 9am (separate lunar led modules)

%s Ch1, Ch2, Ch3, Ch4, Ch5, Ch6
9 am 0,0, 2, 0, 0, 0
10am 0,0, 6, 1, 0, 0
11am 0,0,10, 1, 3,10
12pm 1,0,14, 4,10,14 12:30pm T5s on
1 pm 1,1,16, 6,16,16
2 pm 1,1,18, 8,18,18
3 pm 2,2,20,10,20,20
4 pm 2,2,22,12,22,22
5 pm 2,2,20,10,20,20
6 pm 1,1,18, 8,18,18
7 pm 1,1,16, 6,16,16
8 pm 1,0,14, 4,10,14 8:30pm T5s off
9 pm 0,0,10, 1, 3,10
10pm 0,0, 6, 1, 0, 0
11pm 0,0, 2, 0, 0, 0

 

[jason2459]

I have the SWS reporting up but have had some snafus which some of it was some misunderstanding on my part and some quirkiness things and some errors. But the Seneye support has been doing an awesome job in responding to my emails and also pointing out one of the issues which was my lack of actually reading what the instructions said. But I'll get another thread started for the whole Seneye and SWS vs Laptop experience to not distract this one.

Needless to say I still have par readings going up to my seneye.me cloud portal and I have my new 2016 EB832 power bars tracking Watts used. The seneye.me portal gets updates 2 times an hour which is good as I can get a snapshot before and after my T5s get turned on.

Only negative with the seneye.me reporting is it is a snapshot so from my experience so far if something like a fish is over the device at that time the reading will be way down. I'll get to the SWS live portal later but for now I'm finding just the watts used interesting.

 

[jason2459]

This whole PAR light measurement thing has been addictive... ha!

Keep waiting for seneye.me to update the readings and hope some fish doesn't shade it. There was one reading where there was most definitely something blocking some light.

You can see the dip when its blocked a lot

Going to do some long term tracking and once I can get access to the SWS I can get PUR and track it to.

 

[jason2459]

1st day of measuring par and watts used with the new settings and bulbs. The Par has some variance as I couldn't get the live readings early but is pretty close but having lots of fish will cause some shading that is not conducive to snapshot readings.

That pretty much shows me T5s are not very efficient lights. lol

But they sure are pretty. As soon as the T5s kick on the watts used jumps over the PAR produced. But as the LEDs were really starting to ramp up the PAR started edging back closer.

Average PAR for the 15 hour period was 112
Average Watts used for that period was 110 watts

 

[jason2459]

Opps correction. I shouldn't do excel at 1am

And FYI the T5s added about 170watts so you can Subtract 170 watts from the 12:30 to 8:30 numbers to get just the LEDs watts used.

So, this still shows T5s aren't very efficient and pulled far away from PAR produced once they turned on.

 

[LostInTheDark]

I enjoy tagging along and digesting all the info but, just out of curiosity, do you have a life outside of all your testing?
Seriously. I enjoy all your threads.

 

[jason2459]

I enjoy tagging along and digesting all the info but, just out of curiosity, do you have a life outside of all your testing?
Seriously. I enjoy all your threads.

Thanks. My life is family, work, and once family goes to bed its play time as long as I don't have more work. I enjoy it but most everything I do is quite late at night.

 

[jason2459]

2% Royal Blues + 1% Deep Red!!!!!! it's awesome!! It's like I have those glo fish. My lyretail anthias and one spot foxface are glowing like crazy and so are a few other things like my two common star fish. My anemones too but they were doing that with just the Royal Blues.


Oh wow the coral beauuty is cool with this like that. Yellows and oranges just glow.

 

[jason2459]

One more day of collecting par/pur/watts. I think a 3 day average should be good enough. I'll see if I can do this every 3 months or so. I added the PUR to the chart.

 

[LostInTheDark]

I used to run the OR S026s but gave them up because the blue channel would burn out every 6 months. I have a 30in deep tank so I ran them pretty high. I now run T5s and for the cost of the bulbs once a year I don't have to worry about anything light related. For fun, I took apart one of the ORs and made a 72in long light bar that I use to add POP. I added 2 660 reds to a bunch of 450 and 470 blues and just love the look of the sunrise/sunset. The best is the bright red glowing Anthias as they pass under the 660s.

 

[jason2459]

After watching the tank all weekend I'm pretty happy with the Bulbs and LED settings. I don't know if I'm ramping up and down like I should so will keep watching the inhabitants.

To me peak and around the peak times it is more blue then 14k , not near 20k, but it is a very crisp looking color I was looking for. Everything is vibrant which the Actinic may be helping that and the Blue+ seems to be helping the brightness and crispness. If that makes sense. The white(yellowish white) from the LEDs is definitely helping the tank from looking to 20k or like Windex. So, even though I was hoping for a whiter white it might just be a good thing its not in this case.

As for the light meter testing I added LUX in too as I have the numbers may as well plug them in. First time doing this I will most probably do this better and more efficiently next time and more accurately.

Few things I learned this first go around.

Adding LUX in was interesting and corresponded directly with watts used. T5s being the biggest impact.

White and interestingly the cool blue channels ramping up decreased PUR.

T5s are obviously not nearly as efficient as LEDs in delivering PAR per watts. Blue+ bulbs deliver more PAR then Coral+ and True Actinic. They did not seem to impact the PUR up or down at 77% of the PAR value. I will need to see where their PUR values are when on by themselves as I only seem to have PAR values.

Pretty cool and hope to learn more. For right now though I'm not changing any settings.

 

[jason2459]

Jason, I think the work you have done here is worthwhile and I'm following along. But I do have one issue with the readings.

I'm curious about the PUR readings. I'm still far from convinced that the PUR readings from this meter are all that useful... or maybe accurate would be a better word choice. I'm not saying PUR isn't more important than PAR, it obviously is. But I'm, at the very least, skeptical of the value of the PUR readings you are getting.

First do you know which spectrum they are reading and then calling PUR versus what spectrum they are reading and calling PAR (I assume 400nm to 700nm)? Does the manufacturer give you specific spectrum they measure? Or ranges? Or even name the basic colors they read?

And where did the info on exactly what the PUR spectrum should became from? It seems to me that the PUR for a shallow coral could/should/would be quite different than that of a deeper water coral given the different light they get due to the water's filtering effect.

If it's just an average and the sensor is reading mostly blues and some red, it's just a percentage of the PAR. And your charts seem to bare that out pretty dramatically. The PAR and PUR graphs have a very solid correlation with PUR being roughly 2/3rds to 3/4ths of PAR.

I think it would be very interesting to compare the PAR vs PUR of each led channel and each t5 bulb. In particular we have green leds in the Photon V2. It's not typically considered a PUR is it? How does the PAR vs PUR look if the green leds are the only light to be measured?

I also brought up those questions on how accurate, valuable, and specific are the PUR values as a whole or for different corals. There is one research that shows red light hinders the growth for at least one specific coral but what about others and other photosynthetic organisms like clams and anemones. You'll want to check out my PAR shootout thread
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/p...ull-spectrum-underwater-quantum-meter.292681/


I do feel better about the PUR ratings after going through the testing at least as far as being potentially useful in seeing when the phosphors in the T5s and LEDs start burning out before the bulb does. Of course T5s much faster.

The Seneye has spectrum sensors along with PAR and LUX. From that it calculates the PUR based on general photosynthesis research on chlorophyll A and B which peaks PUR at around 420, 450, 640, and 660. So, the PUR value is the percentage of the PAR value that lays in the spectrum defined by chlorophyll a/b and possibly carotenoids as the spectrum chart in the Seneye follows this.

 

[jason2459]

And
I actually got individual light PAR and PUR readings and they lined up well with that chart based on the LED ratings.

From that PAR shootout thread:

All of the rest are at 30% individual Channels.

Channel 1 Deep Red 4 Osram 3watt 660nm (edit: Just noticed this was the highest pur rating. Kudos to reef breeders for selecting deep red for the red channel led)
Photon v2 30% red only by Jason, on Flickr

Photon v2 30% red only by Jason, on Flickr



Channel 2 Green 4 Semi LED 3watt 520nm
Photon v2 30% channel 2 green only by Jason, on Flickr

Photon v2 30% channel 2 green only by Jason, on Flickr



Channel 3 Royal Blue 20 Cree XT-E 5watt 450nm
Photon v2 30% channel 3 royal blue only by Jason, on Flickr

Photon v2 30% channel 3 royal blue only by Jason, on Flickr


Channel 4 White 16 Cree XP-E 5watt 5500K
Photon v2 30% channel 4 white only by Jason, on Flickr

Photon v2 30% channel 4 white only by Jason, on Flickr


Channel 5 Cool Blue 12 Cree XP-E 3watt 480nm
Photon v2 30% channel 5 cool blue only by Jason, on Flickr

Photon v2 30% channel 5 cool blue only by Jason, on Flickr