# How can i grow that dark green lush look carpet?



## Jeffww (Aug 6, 2010)

A lot of that coloration is a combination of lighting (very blue/cold) and photoshop enhancement. 

I would also suggest trimming to tighten it up and make it look more "lush"


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## Charlieeex3 (Aug 18, 2013)

So basically its the lighting that im using that isnt getting that dark green. Can anyone guide me what kind of lighting would work for a 5.5 gallon tank?


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## Raymond S. (Dec 29, 2012)

It's what light is being used on the tank to take those pictures, not what is being used to grow the plants. If you can get a single bulb strip light and use an actinic bulb it will help it to look that way. Also I think that Satalite makes a light that has multi-colored bulbs/programing.


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## Down_Shift (Sep 20, 2008)

Charlieeex3 said:


> So basically its the lighting that im using that isnt getting that dark green. Can anyone guide me what kind of lighting would work for a 5.5 gallon tank?


you pic looks a bit bright.

the ray2 might be washing out your colors. try an experiment, pick the ray2 off the tank and raise it slowly.. see if it helps at all with added height.


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## pirayaman (Mar 30, 2008)

yours needs a trim hahahh I think lighting as well yours looks less blue


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## aquabruce (May 10, 2012)

I'm curious about your CO2 and dosing. 

It may be the light but I thought the Finnex Planted + was supposed to be a good light. Why would it wash out the green color?


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## Raymond S. (Dec 29, 2012)

It has no green spectrum. White/red/blue on the bulb colors. LED bulbs tend to be mono spectrum.
Go make up a light on the BML site and look at how much of each color is represented on the charts of the one you
built on there. AND if you check into it you will find that 95% of all entrants to the Aquascaping contest
use T5 lighting because of the spectrum those bulbs put out. The Planted+ adds some red bulbs but takes away some white
in order to do that. That white contains some yellow spectrum as you will find when you make one up on
the BML site. Just check it to see.
http://www.bmlcustom.com/custom-led-strip/

BTW: The Planted+ is great for plants as it includes some of the 660nm spectrum light that plants can use well.
Right now I have an experiment going to determine which works better. I ran two T5 bulbs for 4 months. One 6500K and one 6700K.
Now I'm running one 6700K and one 650nm with the same everything else/same tank/plants. Will let everyone know the
results I get. Won't be conclusive or even a wide selection of plants etc but at least I can say I did it in my own tank
instead of taking somebodies word for it.
There has always been a debate over does the red spectrum make any noticeable difference in plant growth.
I say that's the wrong question. The right question is do the plants loose more by removing the white spectrum 
that you removed to replace it with the red. I'm finding that out in my tank right now.


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## aquabruce (May 10, 2012)

I have a BML fixture. 10,000k.The LEDs are red, white, and blue. My baby tears are as green as the 2nd pic.


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## Raymond S. (Dec 29, 2012)

aquabruce said:


> I have a BML fixture. 10,000k.The LEDs are red, white, and blue. My baby tears are as green as the 2nd pic.


That's great. Perhaps you could compare ferts and other things with Charlieeex3 to see if anything your doing might
help to improve things in their tank. How long have your baby tears been growing for ? The ones in their tank look
fairly new and untrimmed. Might length of time be a factor here ?
Only suggestions but this thread was for them to learn how to do what you have already.


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## aquabruce (May 10, 2012)

> That's great. Perhaps you could compare ferts and other things with Charlieeex3 to see if anything your doing might
> help to improve things in their tank.


I asked above about CO2 and ferts... OP hasn't replied yet.


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## Charlieeex3 (Aug 18, 2013)

Here's a closer picture of my HC to see more details. It's not as washed out in the first picture. The finnex planted+ works really well but I think led can't produce that dark green look to the plants. Iv noticed people with that dark green plants use t5 lighting.


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## Solcielo lawrencia (Dec 30, 2013)

Charlieeex3 said:


> Here's a closer picture of my HC to see more details. It's not as washed out in the first picture. The finnex planted+ works really well but I think led can't produce that dark green look to the plants. Iv noticed people with that dark green plants use t5 lighting.


Add more blue light to shift the color balance. The leaves will reflect more blue light, giving the darker color. You could even make the leaves look red if you add red light. You want HC to be black? Turn off the lights.

It's important to understand that the pigments, chlorophyll, do not change; i.e. the leaves don't actually change color. Only the light that it reflects can change. So by changing the color of the lights, the leaves will reflect a different combination of lights giving that darker green, actually more blue, color.


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## pirayaman (Mar 30, 2008)

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk


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## kman (Dec 11, 2013)

It also could be a function of white balance in the camera. Frankly, without seeing the tanks you're trying to emulate in person, you're never going to confident of the actual color. Between the camera used, the lighting used, the settings applied to the final photo JPG, and the color calibration of the monitor you're viewing the JPG on, there are way too many variables at play to trust a color match on screen, unless you're certain that proper calibration profiles have been applied along every step of the process, from start to your screen.


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## pirayaman (Mar 30, 2008)

Your baby tears look really clean and healthy 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk


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## Charlieeex3 (Aug 18, 2013)

The baby tears are very healthy and growing pretty quickly with my finnex planted+. I really want to try out the Sat+ but im not sure if it will get me that dark green look to the plants. Can anyone help me decide?


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## Jeffww (Aug 6, 2010)

I have a sat + fw lamp. It does a good job of rendering colors. I don't think you'll get that really jade green color with it though.


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## shift (Jan 7, 2013)

Is your HC the same color in the photos as in real life? (white balance could be off.)
You could also try turning the blue leds on your planted plus fixutre (switch on oposite side) to cast a cooler light..


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## Charlieeex3 (Aug 18, 2013)

The second picture is really close to what it looks like. I always had the blue leds on although i dont think it does much. I havent seen any LED lights that could make that really jade green color besides t5 or like Ada Solar M light. Im not sure if im right, but thats just my observations from looking around on the forums


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## Charlieeex3 (Aug 18, 2013)

There's this guy near my area that customizes led lights. Would i get that jade green look on my hc if i add green led to my planted+?


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## Raymond S. (Dec 29, 2012)

Wait for this to be co-signed but I think the blue bulbs is what you need to do that/w. The darker ones in fact. Green bulbs
would increase the amount of green, known in photo shop as "saturation". A color hue needs to be changed by actually
adding more(or any) of the color you wish to lean towards. I would think the 470nm bulbs would do this or possibly the
450nm ones.


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## Charlieeex3 (Aug 18, 2013)

You have to dumb it down for me lol. The guy says he can mount 2 strips of green LEDS on the side of the wall. A total of 42 green led. he says it will add 560 lumens and charge me $30. I still dont get what this all means...


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## Solcielo lawrencia (Dec 30, 2013)

Charlieeex3 said:


> You have to dumb it down for me lol. The guy says he can mount 2 strips of green LEDS on the side of the wall. A total of 42 green led. he says it will add 560 lumens and charge me $30. I still dont get what this all means...


You really need to learn about and understand light and pigment. But if you're mentally lazy, it's not my money that's being wasted. IOW, don't spend your money since you won't get what you're looking for.

What we're trying to tell you is: you need to add blue light to get that bluish color of green.


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## Raymond S. (Dec 29, 2012)

He may be the one who needs to dumb it down as I don't get what he means by "on the walls". There are underwater LED lights
and this could be it or it may be the wall next to the tank so see what I mean ?
Actually I got the impression that he was going to change out some of your bulbs which are now in the currant light fixture at first.
There are true colors and hues of them. Shades just refer to lighter or darker. But Tourquois is a greenish blue and Teal is a blueish
green. Those are hues. White light is all colors combined so you are already getting green. The blue part is what you are missing.
Does this person know what you are going for ?


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## Charlieeex3 (Aug 18, 2013)

Ah thanks. Yea I showed him what I wanted he says he would add green less to the light. I'm just going to stick with my planted + and play it safe. I'm so glad plantedtanks exist, I really learn a lot from here.
Can anyone guide me of what their fixture is if you have what in looking for? I can't find anything on it


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## Charlieeex3 (Aug 18, 2013)

I think the reason why my HC look they way they are because of the finnex planted+ is 7000k white light with reds leds which makes it have a "warmer" look.

Anyone know if 10000k cool white leds would make my hc that jade green?
Build my led has a light that has 10000k lights
http://www.buildmyled.com/10000k-planted/

They also have a 13000k one. 

Can anyone help me confirm this? The higher the light the "cooler" it looks?


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## green18 (Jan 6, 2014)

The thing to understand is that it doesn't come down to just the white lights in a fixture like that. They are still mixing in a few royal blues and I think a couple reds as well.

I am currently using reef lights but I do not run the exclusive blue channel, just the white channel. By "white channel" I mean that it has neutral whites, cool whites, a couple reds, and still 4 or 5 blues. I can take electrical tape and cover one or two of the blues and it literally changes the look from 10k to 5500k. 

I guess my point is that it is really hard to say exactly what each fixture will do because they generally are not just a single bulb color. Changing even one or two led's to a different color radically changes the appearance.

I do think their 10000k would likely get you a very dark green compared to their lower K bulbs for sure. At the same time it will look a little less like sunlight.


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## kman (Dec 11, 2013)

green18 said:


> The thing to understand is that it doesn't come down to just the white lights in a fixture like that. They are still mixing in a few royal blues and I think a couple reds as well.
> 
> I am currently using reef lights but I do not run the exclusive blue channel, just the white channel. By "white channel" I mean that it has neutral whites, cool whites, a couple reds, and still 4 or 5 blues. I can take electrical tape and cover one or two of the blues and it literally changes the look from 10k to 5500k.
> 
> ...


I think the issue is LEDs, by design, do not put out a broad spectrum of light. Natural light has a HUGE spectrum. CFLs put out quite a huge spectrum as well. The color temp rating of a light bulb is an average of all the spectrum it's putting out. LEDs, on the other hand, put out an extremely narrow spectrum of light. Even the "white" LEDs are very, very narrow in the light they _actually_ put out. Adding the colored LEDs at given light frequencies helps flesh out the missing spectrum from the narrow-band LED spectrum.


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## Raymond S. (Dec 29, 2012)

This whole issue is meaningless if a filter was used when the picture was taken which turns the plants blue looking. The same thing applies if the blue color was enhansed in the photoshop when the picture was processed.
It would be hard to determine this. However I have never seen plants that color
but that doesn't mean much though as I certainly haven't seen so many I can actually say no plant is actually that color.
But BML does offer light bulbs in four shades/hues of blue and I fail to see which part of
the common sense statement "if you want more of a blue look...you need to add blue" that is being overlooked here.
If you customize a light on BML with mostly regular bulbs and then do the same with
more BLUE bulbs added their graphs will show you how the blue bulbs changed the light.


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## kman (Dec 11, 2013)

Raymond S. said:


> This whole issue is meaningless if a filter was used when the picture was taken which turns the plants blue looking. The same thing applies if the blue color was enhansed in the photoshop when the picture was processed.
> It would be hard to determine this. However I have never seen plants that color
> but that doesn't mean much though as I certainly haven't seen so many I can actually say no plant is actually that color.
> But BML does offer light bulbs in four shades/hues of blue and I fail to see which part of
> ...


That's why I pointed out, many posts ago, that's impossible to know what the actual plant color is from a photo.

Here's the question: Does the OP want his plants to look that shade of green in person? (then you need to adjust the lighting on the plants, and/or change the lighting used on the plants in order to coerce the plants to grow in a different color... if that's even possible... but I THINK that's what the OP is getting at) OR does the OP simply want to take photos that make the plants look that color green? (this happens by adjusting photo settings in camera, or the lighting for the photo, or photoshopping after the fact, or a even combination of all of these)

They're entirely different issues, with entirely different methods of attack.


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## Raymond S. (Dec 29, 2012)

Here is my suggestion to this and I will reply no further.
The person who has the plants should learn how to trim them by doing it for a while and then after he is successful at that I believe the plants would be a bit darker
after they are growing longer and more dense. 
Then he can worry about a particular hue that the plants are as he will have more experience with them and therefor be better able to do that.
Doing that will also give him more time to research it to find out what it takes to grow more healthy plants and also look into how to use different colors of bulbs to change those colors with so he won't waste any money buying the wrong light.


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## FlyingHellFish (Nov 5, 2011)

It's not always photoshop or some weird settings, this is what my iPhone4 gave me.

Unedited. 


























If it's already green in real life, then you can wash out the colour with lighting. If it's a little yellow in real life, then you can't get it greener unless you photoshop.


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## shift (Jan 7, 2013)

My iphone tank pics 

Glosso tank 

















HC tank 

















Different shots if the same tank taken with the same phone have slightly different colors


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## FlyingHellFish (Nov 5, 2011)

^ Very nice and healthy growth! Are those tanks all on Finnex? 

By the way, what CBS shrimps are those? SS+? They look so good, I want them.


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## Charlieeex3 (Aug 18, 2013)

FlyingHellFish said:


> It's not always photoshop or some weird settings, this is what my iPhone4 gave me.
> 
> Unedited.
> 
> ...


This is exactly what i want! Are you using T5 lighring or just using the led light that came with the fluvel edge?


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## shift (Jan 7, 2013)

FlyingHellFish said:


> ^ Very nice and healthy growth! Are those tanks all on Finnex?
> 
> By the way, what CBS shrimps are those? SS+? They look so good, I want them.



Thank you. First tank is fugeray second is planted plus

I have a ton if baby CBS/CRS in the tank so I'm hoping I'll have a huge cony this spring


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## lemonnoodle (Apr 1, 2013)

Damn how are u guys getting such good shots with your iphone


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## FlyingHellFish (Nov 5, 2011)

Leds and CFL on the 6 gallon, except for the first picture. I think Fluorescent lighting in a cooler temp is what you want.


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## shift (Jan 7, 2013)

lemonnoodle said:


> Damn how are u guys getting such good shots with your iphone


Just touch the screen of where you want it to focus and hold it still!
The one of the close up of pearling i held a mini magnifying lens infront of the camera to get the close up.


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