Led light - how are your reds?

[jcgd]

I'm finding with my LED fixture not getting very good red coloration in plants. I have good high light, EI and good co2 levels but my plants are not showin reds well in plants such as ammania gracillis, rotalas and pogostemon.

Anything that typically is red is fine, but I'm not getting any bronzing or pink on green plants even near the surface. I think it's the abundance of blue in the LEDs. I have some neutral white, but I'm thinking of adding some warm white or red LEDs.

The only way I get reds is dropping the nitrates. How is everyone else doing?

[pwolfe]

Under my Lowes par38, 5500k, my hygro kompact which was emerald green under a t5 setup, has turned crimson red. Its likely the blue washing things out.

[shrimpNewbie]

Adding red to the light may help because plants turn red to block some of it out. Add a couple warm whites

[jcgd]

I'm thinking that may be it. The tank has a very pleasing colour white, but those reds aren't coming out at all. It's a real bummer.

I have all cool white XML for my main power providing most of my par. I also have half and half neutral white and royal blue for colour temperature adjustment but they don't add much to the total light. Maybe 20 par at the surface and nearly nil at the substrate. Any idea if I should change out some of the XML or some of the neutral white XPG? I'm thinking I should swap some of the XML, maybe add two or three warm whites per pendant and then I can swap some of the neutral whites into royal blues if I need to balance it out again. At least the warm whites would be in the spectrum, even if I pull the colour back to 8000k with the royal blues.

[jcgd]

I ordered 12 warm white XML to swap in for some of the CW and 12 regular blue xpg to swap in for the nw if need be. My colour temp is nice right now so I will probably need to add some more blue after adding all the yellow and red.

I'd really like some others to chime in with their results after using LED for a while.

This is what I had for colour rendering, providing little PAR for growth:




And the cool white XML for main power:


Now my main power will be a mix of the cool white and warm whites:


Before, my spike in the red was half the spike in the blue. Now they will be about even, however I will have a ratio of 10:18, ww:cw.

Hopefully this solves my issue. It could also be my hard water, although kh isn't too hard, it's gh that's high. It's either the spectrum or the co2.

My other tank has t5ho, el cheapo bulbs with no co2 and half-assed dosing and my plants have nice colour, so I don't think it's the water hardness, but it could be low nitrate and high light stress in that tank. I have a lot of light on that one, just got lucky with the algae so far.

[O2surplus]

Justin-

I'm running the "old" XRE "cool whites" on my tank and I'm not having any issues with my plants turning red. I just got some Luwigia var. "Cuba" from ShrimpNewbie last week and it's already going "stupid red" for me. I've also got a short stand of Cabomba that's starting to get a "tan" towards the top. If I were you- I wouldn't start throwing money at new Led's. Your tank is still a fairly new setup, give it some more time to settle in and even skip a water change or two. I found from my own experience that my tank always shows better growth after I've come home from a long vacation, meaning - I'm not around to constantly futz with it. Give it some time, and then if it doesn't do what you want- By all means- Force it to bend to your will! (jk)

[jcgd]

Haha, well, it's too late for the LEDs. Already dropped the dough on them. I figured it'd be a few weeks before I have them though and I'm in no rush to pull down the fixture and re solder a bunch of lights.

It's curious. Maybe it's the co2. The plants are growing fast, and look healthy. Maybe it'll just take more time as I started with tissue cultures. The thing is, I took some plants that were submerged grown from other tanks, fire them in and the reds disappear within a week. Some of the old reds stick around, but the new growth, from the first node, is a nice green colour.

Ferts are good, EI dosing them. I've been playing with the co2, but it was just below gassing the fish for a steady three weeks. The plants were red from day one to about day eight when I started dosing. I also got BGA which makes me think that those reds were nitrate stress because my nitrates were at zero when I tested them. By the second week with full dosing the reds were gone. I still have some light colours, but nothing intense. That's why I thought it was the lighting.

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