Dear all, Let me first introduce myself. My name is Tim and I'm from the Netherlands. I have been reading bits and pieces about ATS systems and decided to go for a version with an airpump. The biggest issue I have so far is obtaining the proper leds from china. I have 2 e27 gooseneck fixtures and 2 types of led grow spots. 15w and 21w version. Unfortunately the 21w versions look more orange than red to me and I guess 620nm. Apart from thay I ordered the 15w seperately and also noticed a big difference here. One has more red so it seems.. because the glow is more violet color while the order tends to look more white (both are 4x red 1x blue mix and 660nm and 455nm).
I used some white canvas and black material normally used to catch leaves from the roof to hold the knitting canvas in place. The airpump I use is a tatratec aps 150lph with an airstone. I attached the airstone with some tiewraps to the black material. The screen size is 11cm by 40cm.. the lid section is a bit smaller (11cm x 16.5cm) at the moment.. because i still need to get the proper lighting 2x21w (6x66pnm, 1xx455nm) before I can lid the entire surface.
It looks like the 5-LED one is 4 reds and a violet, and the 7-LED one is 6 reds and a blue. I offhand I would say that is why they look different. I think they both are OK to use. Have you seen the mortar screen method? That might work better in an upflow. The plain plastic canvas is not a very good substrate for upflow scrubbers.
Dear Trubo, Thank you for taking the time for a reply. I've been looking at different ideas however, I would like the led light to go through the screen as I intend to have some sort of a refugium right next to it (have some cheatomorpha) for some extra room for the pods and other critters to hang around. When the screen is covered with algea I wil aim the light right from the other corner, so it will lighten the scrubber and refugium a bit. Although I still have to think this through. The led looks violet but is blue definately blue.. the red leds change the color of the blue led. I do not know why the other blue led does not change color.. it seems like the red leds are not so intense. To be honest I dont know.
Fortunately the chinese vendors agreed to send me 2 new led lights (21w) it took some time to convince them about the orange leds.. looks like 620nm to me.. too bad I have no tools to measure the color wavelength. I really hope they send the right ones this time.
There are some cheap spectroscopes on ebay that can be used to confirm colors. Might be good to have a known good 660nm for comparison. NEW EISCO Premium Quantitative Spectroscope, +/- 5nm Accuracy
Thank you for the suggestion, I may buy one if the sellers fail to come up with the right led lights.
I decided to buy new grow lights as I have no confidence in that the seller will send me a new set of leds. I have purchased 2x fullspectrum growspots. Each growspot contains 5x3w bridgelux leds 400-840nm (actual wattage will be 5-7w due to the driver the seller told me). These leds have a blue and red peak, the blue peak is not so high compared to the spectrum of COB-leds.. and the red peak is 650nm with a large part in the deep red.
