- Today on BRStv we pull back the curtain
on reef tank lighting
and show you the wizard.
There are only three things that matter.
Once you know them, mastering lighting is easy
and almost any popular light source can be set up
to achieve near perfect results in minutes.
All that's coming up.
(funky rock music)
Hey, this is Brian
with BRStv's master reef tank lighting mini-series set it
and forget it lighting tools
for perfecting coral coloration growth and health.
This is Episode One
our five minute guide,
a recipe that when followed produces the desired results.
The following episodes in this series,
digging into the science
and finer details of why this all works.
The entire playlist can be found pinned
in the comments down below.
And the story,
if you learn how to perfect spread, spectrum and par,
mission accomplished.
All the mysteries have always been hidden
in these three considerations.
It's obvious why reefers
who nail these concepts have so much success
and also obvious why the same challenges
are less than desirable results
consistently present themselves
when you In one of these is overlooked.
We've perfect each one of these individually with an eye
and how they combine together
to achieve the desired result starting with spread
and how light is distributed throughout the tank.
Simply put, decades of results have proven
the best lighting solutions
and related thriving reef tanks are achieved
when we blanket the light
and even intensity difficult to shadow light,
avoiding prolonged hotspots of super high par
that bleach corals
and cool spots with ultra low par that starved them.
The challenge is
many of today's common reef LED lighting options
are small, compact light sources resemble spotlights
more than they do blankets of light,
often with focused lenses that if installed incorrectly
are thousand par laser beams in the center,
300 par a few inches to the right,
and only 30 par just a few inches over.
Fortunately, a solution that is simple
and achievable by every reefer with nearly any light,
it's on the installation and getting mounting height right.
Raising the light up
will disperse the concentrated light more evenly.
Every light has a sweet spot mounting height
where it will blanket
the tank in a desired manner,
especially when you consider
multiple intersecting light sources.
There are a couple methods to getting mounting height right
which starts with if you haven't already picked up a light,
make sure to get the right tool up front.
Specifically if you have a desired fixed mounting height,
like a desire to use legs, a hood or lower mounting height,
so it isn't blinding
from a sitting position right next to the tank.
If you can, it just makes sense
to match a light's optimal performance
or sweet spot to your specific desires.
Most of better manufacturers
have thoroughly tested their lights
and clearly share the optimal mounting height
in their descriptions.
However, Randy has a BRS investigates on most of the lights
that BRS offers with clear data-backed
BRS recommended mounting height suggestions,
all based on thousands of par measurements.
Outside of that there are a couple other ways
to make sure the right tool you selected is installed
for optimal performance.
You may have a unique tank install or aquascape,
but the simplest manner to ballpark it
is just have a friend manually raise the light up
until you see an unacceptable spill outside the tank,
something you can often see on your hand.
The best results will always have some spill
but 15% is about our limit.
Most people get very close there just by eyeballing it.
If you're in the pursuit of perfection,
nothing beats a par meter
which allows you to tune the mounting height
to the specifics of your tank and aquascape.
It's just much easier to know that you've eliminated hot
and cold spots from the tank
when you can actually measure and confirm it.
Spectrum is the second major consideration.
Spectrums may be one of the greatest mysteries
in reef tank lighting.
with very few reefers understanding
what all of these LED slider bars actually do.
But it doesn't have to be that hard.
When talking spectrum,
we're commonly referencing one of these wavelength charts,
which can be kind of intimidating, but it's real simple
once you know what you're looking at.
Each color has a light wavelength assigned to it.
For example, blue is very clearly around 450
so a blue lamp like the ATI blue plus
or royal blue LED channel
where the peak on this chart
and the blue spectrum around 450.
The reason these charts matters is
because corals utilize specific spectrum ranges
for energy production, respiration,
tissue production growth,
and other metabolic functions.
These spectrum ranges are also
what our eyes perceive as color,
what makes a tank visually appealing.
Blue light making the tank blue
and some of the colors pop,
cyan adding a teal color common to many tanks,
the violet channel bringing out that atomic pump
and so on.
using the slider bars to get the spectrum mix ratio tuned
to something good for both coral health
and visual appeal's fairly easy.
First, many light sources
have actually done all the work for you.
Castles optimize a number of LEDs the right ratio,
then hard code that broad blue spectrum blend
so you can't mess it up.
Just more or less adding the white to the eye
and a couple tweaks to auxiliary spectrum.
The Radion Blue G5 is even easier,
the entire light is optimized to a proven spectrum mix.
In this case, the only slider in your use is the intensity
and they all go up and down together.
Outside of options like that,
I would suggest checking out Randy's investigates again
on your specific like
because he's done all the work for you,
confirming the light
and spectrum ratio meets metabolic needs,
tuned to the eye for pleasing color
and provided the resulting spectrum shots for your review.
You can make small tweaks from there,
but this is certainly the easiest path.
Outside of those two options,
because no home reefer
has a multi-thousand dollar spectrometer at home,
it's a bit of active faith and just assumption
that any reputable lighting manufacturer
has demonstrated an understanding of LEDs used
for an application like reefing,
the metabolic needs of corals
and selected the right beam LEDs
and the right ratio of those LEDs
for a reef tank application
the best path here based
on reefers sharing their own results.
Assuming that's the case,
the most effective rule of thumb that I've seen
is slide all the blue channels to max.
This is where the corals
will get a vast majority of their energy from
and then add the cool white channel in
until the tank looks good to the eye.
If your light has the option you can also add green
and red in for visual color to the eye as well,
red in particular will make some of the reds
and the fish and corals pop
but also combined with the blue light
to give a purple haze in the tank,
you may or may not find that purple haze appealing.
There are, of course, some unknowns
and how each of these individual spectrums
affect the corals,
specifically the red.
So I'd use them sparingly.
If you want you can make small adjustments
to nearly all the channels to the eye at this point.
The only one I wouldn't mess with is the royal blue channel
because royal blue is a channel best optimized
for most corals metabolic needs.
Once you have all of these adjusted,
this is your spectrum ratio,
they should all be adjusted or scaled up or down together
to achieve the intensity
or par needs the corals which is next.
The third and last component
of nailing your reef tank lightning for good
is getting the par intensity right.
More or less balancing spread and spectrum
to achieve a specific par goal
for your corals in the tank,
par being a measurement of intensity.
In this case, perfected to the coral types.
The most important factor here is setting lights up too high
and more par than they can handle
is 100 times more likely to kill the coral
than not enough light.
Par is not horsepower where more is always better.
Getting par wrong is one of the most overlooked
and biggest causes of long term frustrations
with a reef tank.
It's not something that can be adjusted by the eye,
and the simple not knowing if you got it right
causes reefers to mess with it frequently
causing more problems.
This is something you want to set it right the first time
and then leave it alone.
There are three ways to get par right,
ask someone you trust for the recommendation
and where the slider should be adjusted to,
best results from someone
who has achieved the type of results that you want,
has a tank size similar to yours,
uses the same light spaced and mounted at a similar height
and has the same basic type of corals,
their recommendation should get you pretty close.
Second, again check out Randy's investigates.
He gives you ideal intensity settings for 60 cube
and 120 gallon tank that may not be your exact size tank
but if it's close you can use that information,
make an educated guess
and most people will get pretty darn close
to the goal numbers.
Third, if you're planning
on putting more than a couple hundred dollars
in corals in the tank
or spent a fortune on lighting,
the most cost Effective thing you can do
in the entire hobby is spend 70 bucks
on renting a par meter for a week
and getting par right,
optimize to your specific takes shape corals and aquascape,
don't even matter what you know for sure,
this lighting thing is done right and you can leave it alone
and just watch the success that comes from that.
Giving par right just means adjusting the intensity
of your LED ratio into ranges where the corals do well,
most LPS polyps and Softy do well in 75 to 115,
SPS do well in 200 to 350 par.
If you get close,
par will never be an issue for your tank.
For those of you with mixed tanks,
you can use the par meter to find areas in the tank
for each type of coral.
You can also use the par meter to adjust mounting heights,
spacing or even intensity of individual LED modules
to create the par ranges that you're looking for
and the satisfaction that comes with knowing
that you did it right.
The single most important thing
that I'm going to share today
is corals are amazingly adaptive creatures
they will actually adapt
to many of our mistakes in lighting
if we only give them a chance.
Meaning set up right the first time
and then resist the temptation to change things,
because you're more likely
to experience a setback than an improvement.
If you do want to change something,
after you do it, give it six months to a year
to see the results.
So perfecting spread, spectrum and pars
with this mini-series is all about.
Today, the 80-20 and getting 80% of reefers
what they need to know.
But what about the finer details,
science and supporting evidence
that satisfies the other 20%?
Who wants to dig deeper?
Well, that's what this playlist mini-series is all about.
Knowing not just the how,
but the why things work
as we transition from proficiency to mastery.
It's all found in our lighting playlist
down in the comments or right here.