New Water Fall Scrubber with Violet LED only

Hello Folks,
Its been awhile since I posted anything. All the scrubbers are doing well but I decided to upgrade one of them. The scrubber on my 150G is a bit to small so I have built a new one that is bigger and only using Violet 420nm LED's.
Bud (Floyd) and I have talked in the past about the 420, 450-ish and 660 nm LED's for their efficiency of growing algae. Years back Bud and I (along with others) switched from CFL to the Red 660nm and it was a huge difference, then we added blue 450nm and were even more impressed. Well since I have added 420nm to the mix and was just blown away by the increase in growth. So, with this test info I decided to take the 450nm out and only use 660/420nm this produced faster thicker growth as the tests showed. WELL, now its time to take the 660nm out of the picture and go 420nm all the way.
This scrubber has been up Since 01/09/2016. It uses almost a full sheet of screen, may 2.5" short on the side. I have 15 420nm LED's per side and dimmable. I did get any pics of the LED's and heatsink going together as its the same as any other really.







This is with the rest of the clear tinted and installed, hardly no light escapes.

 

Thanks Bud. I have high hopes for the all 420 LED scrubber. I will keep you posted one way or the other one the results.

 

I added 420 to the tried and true 660/450 LED array, this is what led me to 660/420 which was even better then the 660/450/420. It seems the blue-ish spectrum always made a big impact, kind of like when we first added the 450 to the 660 only array to get the now 660/450 array. Now I took a huge step and eliminated the red altogether. I ran 660/450 one side and 660/420 the other for a really long time and the 660/420 side was always at least double to triple the thickness of the 660/450 side. I dont think all 420 has ever been attempted.

Bud had talked about using the 420 instead of the 450 but I am not sure where he stands with it at the time with his new builds.

 

I have the import 417-420nm LED's and have had no failure as of yet that were fault of the LED, one was user inflicted as it was touching the slash shield. I have three Display fixtures with 15 each of the 420 and one side of a scrubber with them. I have had great luck with them so far. I have had failures with the 450 imports, two-three in the last couple+ years. Note these failures were in a corrosive area and not sealed off very well, even the wires corroded as well.

 

How is your report on the 420 instead of the 450?

 

Well I checked the growth today and its pretty impressive in some spots and not so much in others. On the edges of the screen I have 1/4-3/8 inch of growth where there is virtually no flow and less light. In the middle where the flow it and the light is the strongest I have hardly any growth besides some little specs which I assume will grow larger and start to fill in.
I started out with the light at max which I guessed was not going to work. This mistake did provide some good results at the sides where there is MUCH less light, so now I have the LED's at the lowest setting and have good hope for the growth now. I took a few pics from the top so they are not the greatest but you can see the growth on the edges if you know what you are looking at.
Those LED's are violet but the camera sees them reddish in some shots???

 

I cut them back to the lowest setting and will check again this week end. I was surprised with all the growth on the side so soon, its hard to see from the pic but its all at least 1/4" thick plus.

 

The growth on the edge is great, but there is hardly no flow there. The center is staying brown and its just a film so I have picked the hours up a couple to see what will happen next.