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In 2019 I picked up a second hand Waterbox (4x2x2). It was run as a marine tank and came with a couple of Hydra 26 lights. They have a total of 26 diodes per unit and are rated at about 90W each from the wall. They're very heavy in blue with roughly half of the LEDs being some variation of blue. There two red diodes, two blue diodes and the rest are white.
I decided to test my PAR today with my Seneye and got this.
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It's obviously blue heavy as you might expect, and the PAR reading is probably a little higher than I expected. That's at the substrate directly under the light.
Since setup in 2019 I've had issues with old leaves deteriorating, becoming covered in algae and dying off. When I say old, the top 2-3 nodes on stems are okay, the rest struggle. This has persisted across a substrate change from Fluval Stratum to ADA Amazonia, changes to biological media, a more powerful return pump, the addition of an inline atomiser feeding a DIY cerges reactor, experimentation with commercial fertilisers and various DIY formulations including chelated and unchelated micros and improvements in my maintenance schedule.
The only things I haven't tried are switching to full RO water (we have beautifully soft, good quality water here - others run successful tanks on it) and a change to the lights.
I've been tossing up buying some Chihiros Vivid 2s, but want to get some idea of whether the lighting above is likely to cause issues like I'm having with old growth. I've read that people care about spectrum more than plants, but new lights are about the only thing I haven't tried.
I decided to test my PAR today with my Seneye and got this.
It's obviously blue heavy as you might expect, and the PAR reading is probably a little higher than I expected. That's at the substrate directly under the light.
Since setup in 2019 I've had issues with old leaves deteriorating, becoming covered in algae and dying off. When I say old, the top 2-3 nodes on stems are okay, the rest struggle. This has persisted across a substrate change from Fluval Stratum to ADA Amazonia, changes to biological media, a more powerful return pump, the addition of an inline atomiser feeding a DIY cerges reactor, experimentation with commercial fertilisers and various DIY formulations including chelated and unchelated micros and improvements in my maintenance schedule.
The only things I haven't tried are switching to full RO water (we have beautifully soft, good quality water here - others run successful tanks on it) and a change to the lights.
I've been tossing up buying some Chihiros Vivid 2s, but want to get some idea of whether the lighting above is likely to cause issues like I'm having with old growth. I've read that people care about spectrum more than plants, but new lights are about the only thing I haven't tried.
