Color Mixing, lookin to purchase more colors

http://www.3reef.com/forums/led-aquarium-lighting/rapids-uvs-blues-came-crap-im-tired-130904.html

Especially with the maxwells which tend to overheat, I'd err on the side of caution! I do respectfully disagree with the white light addition. I have 8 more blues than whites and I run my blues at 70% and whites at 35% and i still think its too white. I'd def stick to more blues. IMO

 

Understandable information. I have been running these 2 drivers (blue at maximum, white at 80%) for a few months now with no problems. I dont foresee any problems either, seems to be working great.

Also one thing to note, the whites are much more apparent/brighter than the blues. If you had an even number of blues/whites it would look like a 10000k setup in my opinion. These whites drown out the blues EASILY, hence why I have much more blues than whites. And as far as the new additions, they arent "visible" very much to the human eye, so it wont change the color as much but it will help the color enhancement of corals.

Thats all my opinion/understand, others may differ.

 

I do not need to worry about heating. I built a fixture out of CPU heatsinks thermally pasted together, help together with steel channels. This thing is heavy/thick, and in addition to that I have two 8cm fans running when the lights are on. Let me tell you, this thing stays cool and I havent noticed ANY warmth to it whatsoever.

 

Uvs are not visible to human eyes but red very, very much is! I have 2 reds an if I didn't have so Many other LEDs it would be overpowering. I would say green does about the same. They make colors pop, but you need to drown them out with more white to maintain the look you want. Again, the number of whites is for coverage. It doesn't mean you need to run them at even 80 percent. Your maxwells seem to do ok now, but adding more load could easily change that.

 

Soudns good,if I choose to add red, it will likely be only 2.

Well at this point im not adding any more load except on my white driver. The blues I am keeping at the same load, and the whites I will raise to 14 LED's on that driver. The other LED's are going to be on a seperate third driver so it should be fine.

When people say mix and match LED's I thought that all the LED's had to be the same time. I would rather not have to worry about different max currents/input currents/and other technical data. If i stick to the same supplier LED's I will be okay.

I will take a look into rapid though.

 

Using those maxwells is a bigger risk then mixing LEDs! They typically have similar max currents so just set te driver to the lowest current and you will be fine

 

Don't flip out dude. You are trying to overpower, in my opinion, a driver that shouldn't be overpowered. I am not arguing anythin just stating my advice on too much current being more dangerous then mixing brands. Your budget would really go south if you lost that driver and led string.

 

Are you painting the steel? Steel over a saltwater tank is gonna corrode pretty quick.

I don't see that as an attack, just a helpful hint to save ya from burning a string out or causing a fire, which seems to happen to those drivers from time to time.

At their price its prob a decent idea to just get an extra driver so its not maxed out.

 

Yes the steel is already painted. It is not going to corrode, if u have a fixture raised 10+ inches above a tank with a tank cover, no water/evaporation moisture is going to touch it.

Okay, honestly. I am going to refrain from posting LED threads. Because everytime I post something about an aquastyle/bridgelux/maxwell driver setup I have to over and over again listen to peoples negatives even tho I procede to just solely ask for advice on my color combinations questions at hand. I know the limitations of the drivers, I know their technical stats, all i was asking about was the "look" of color combinations.

It wasnt an attack, I understand that, but over and over again, for no apparent reason "certain" members feel its necessary to post their opinions about these setups when I am already fully aware of their opinions as we have on countless instances voiced eachothers opinions already.

I wasnt attacking back by any means, just trying to keep people on the subject of color combinations. Im honestly disappointed that this thread is going this route again.

And just FYI, i have talked to multiple electricians, these low voltage LED's with such minimal heat, on a pure metal fixture, have the littlest risk of a fire. Im not saying its out of the question, but honestly, you can close this thread because i stated in the first post "Ive heard all about how rapid is preferred over bridgelux, so no need to get into that . Just looking for opinions on color combinations."

I will go from here, dont got much more to say. Its like listening to a broken record.

Thanks for the help and those who contributed.