# Comparison of color temperature Finnex Stingray vs Planted+..



## mattinmd (Aug 16, 2014)

So, I recently got a stingray for my smaller tank, which I upgraded from a 5 gallon to a 10 at the Petco DPG sale...

One thing that struck me is how much cooler the color temperature of the stingray is in comparison to the planted+, even with the blue moonlights on.

To be honest, I really like the appearance of the tank with the stingray. It has a certain crisp vibrance to it that I like.

Regardless, in this shot, there's a stingray on the 10g on the left, and the planted+ is on the 36-bow on the right. Notice the color of the walls, which are actually painted the same color.... All other lights in the room are off at the time of the shot.

Please pardon the mild mess in the 10 gallon... I just set it up on Tuesday and haven't gotten all the plants into the substrate yet. (and yes, those are PVC conduit couplers and fake silk red plants in there, the 5g was originally set up on the cheap as a QT tank, and the 10g inherited them to start with...)











I suppose in retrospect the difference should be expected..

The planted+ is about 1/3 red, with a very trivial amount of blue LEDs. The stingray actually has one more blue LED than red, and each is about 1/5th the total led count...

The LED counts are: as follows 

fixture - white:red:blue
Stingray - 23:4:5
Planted+- 104:48:8


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## theatermusic87 (Jun 22, 2014)

Interesting to see them side by side like that


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## mattinmd (Aug 16, 2014)

Yeah, that is what caused me to take and post the photo. Aquarium co-op has a video comparing the two side by side as well. However the tanks are store tanks with very little in them and black backgrounds. It gives a better impression of the brightness difference as they are both 24" on a 20 high tank, but the brighness difference hides the color differences. In my case both tanks are around 35 par at the substrate.


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## alohamonte (Jul 25, 2006)

Is the stingyray enough light to grow plants? I'm looking at the 24" stingray for my 20g tall to replace the coralife 2x24w strip I have on there now.


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## jeffkrol (Jun 5, 2013)

alohamonte said:


> Is the stingyray enough light to grow plants? I'm looking at the 24" stingray for my 20g tall to replace the coralife 2x24w strip I have on there now.


If I had to guess, the one stingray will be less light than what you have now.. whatever that means to you..

Strictly as a very broad rule of thumb.. 1/2W LED = 1W fluorescent..

24" stingray is 13W


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## mattinmd (Aug 16, 2014)

jeffkrol said:


> If I had to guess, the one stingray will be less light than what you have now.. whatever that means to you..
> 
> Strictly as a very broad rule of thumb.. 1/2W LED = 1W fluorescent..
> 
> 24" stingray is 13W


Agreed in general, although I would argue it is less dramatic than the normal rule of thumb suggests, only because the fixture in question is a coralife, so a lot of the light generated never makes it out of the fixture due to horrible reflector design..

If the fixture was decent, the performance difference would be large.

A 24" dual bulb T5HO coralife at 16" is about 40 PAR... (red curve near the bottom) 

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/showthread.php?t=184368

Aquarium co-op stuck a stingray on a 20-high and got 30 PAR:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD7QaRzf1Qw

Thus the stingray on a 20-high should be a good setup for low-tech plant growth.. if you're going high-tech and CO2 injection, it isn't for you unless your tank is very shallow.


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## jeffkrol (Jun 5, 2013)

mattinmd said:


> Agreed in general, although I would argue it is less dramatic than the normal rule of thumb suggests, only because the fixture in question is a coralife, so a lot of the light generated never makes it out of the fixture due to horrible reflector design..
> 
> If the fixture was decent, the performance difference would be large.
> 
> ...


Agreed and thanks. Sometimes I get tired of looking at or finding PAR charts.. 

Oddly enough that fits the "secondary" rule well 1/3W =1W..
A (non-existent) 16W Stingray...
fun w/ numbers..

The "rule" is based on a few measurements that have been done by various sources so it certainly isn't meant for anything real critical.. 

spending hard earned cash and having it under-perform to expectations is worse than a bit extra par..

The best answer of course is over PAR-ed and dimmable..


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## mattinmd (Aug 16, 2014)

I still think the 1/2w to 1w is a good rule of thumb, assuming the 1w fluorescent you are talking about is a T5HO with good reflectors.. 

There's just so many efficiency factors out there that can wildly throw these rules off though. Like the Coralife, which is really not normal in terms of light output.


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## brooksie321 (Jul 19, 2014)

I have a stingray behind a planted plus on a 20 tall.. stingray comes on an hour before as a sort of wake up cycle. It does look nice in there with just the stingray going.. both together look pretty sweet too


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## grizzly_a (Sep 9, 2014)

I agree, I really like the color spectrum, but would like a bit more red and a tiny bit brighter. But it looks great and still grows my lower light plants. 

I have a stingray on a 20H, 29, and 36Bow. On the 36bow I have a Ray2 and use the stingray for color depth and "night light". It really intensifies the colors of the blues/reds on my fish. (My neons really POP!!!)


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## mattinmd (Aug 16, 2014)

Yeah, I'd have gone for more red as well.. stacking more blue on top of 7000k LEDs seems a tad silly. Maybe some day I'll take a soldering iron to the board and swap in a few warm whites for some of the blues....

That said, I'm still impressed with the light, even though the effective color temperature is quite high, it still has enough red to make red plants, etc look ok.


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## goodbytes (Aug 18, 2014)

Wow, its really great to see these two lights side by side. I would have thought the Planted + would have the same color tone only brighter. 



alohamonte said:


> Is the stingyray enough light to grow plants? I'm looking at the 24" stingray for my 20g tall to replace the coralife 2x24w strip I have on there now.


It absolutely is.


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## mattinmd (Aug 16, 2014)

goodbytes said:


> Wow, its really great to see these two lights side by side. I would have thought the Planted + would have the same color tone only brighter.


Yeah, I naively thought they'd be close, but in retrospect if you look at the specs it is very obvious it should be much more blue..

20" planted+: 72 white, 40 red, 8 blue (blues switchable separately)
20" stingray: 23 white, 4 red, 5 blue (blues NOT switchable separately)

So if you look at the red-to-blue ratio, there's 5 times more red than blue in the planted+, and the blues can be turned off leaving it just red/white... 

On the stingray, there's more blue than there is red, and you can't turn them off without turning off the whole fixture.

So in hindsight, the stingray is clearly going to be at a slightly higher color temperature than the 7000k of their whites, since there's more blue being added than red... 

The planted+ is going to be at a lower color temperature than 7000k, because there's a lot more red being added than blue.


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## grizzly_a (Sep 9, 2014)

I decided to freak out the fish and put all 3 fixtures on the tank so you can see the differences between the Ray2, Planted+, and Stingray. These are on my 36 bowfront, and are all 30" Finnex Fixtures.

All fixtures were placed in the same place on the tank and they are going through a versatop with humidity droplets on the underside (real world lighting). No other ambient lighting in room. Photos taken with iPhone 5s camera, not the greatest. You can see the color differences between the stingray and the others. The difference between the Ray2 and the Planted+ is not as noticeable in the picture. You do see the difference on the Ray2 of the gaps in lighting the edges of the tank.

Stingray 30" (the Planted+ is stacked on top of the Ray2, but it's off and only the light reflecting off the versa top)










Planted+









Ray2









Stingray at front of tank


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## burr740 (Feb 19, 2014)

Good thread.


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## mattinmd (Aug 16, 2014)

Indeed, thanks for sharing grizzly_a...

Probably the main reason the Planted+ and Ray2 differences aren't very obvious is the camera is they are separate pictures. The camera is going to try to adjust both white balance and brightness of the exposure on a shot-by-shot basis. It probably ended up balancing out most of the difference.

Notice that in the picture the blue of the heater seems more vibrant in the planted+ vs Ray2 shot? I suspect the camera boosted to blues a bit more to balance out the redder light of the planted+. (or conversely cut the blues in the ray2 shot)


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## grizzly_a (Sep 9, 2014)

Got any tips on setting an iPhone to take a better photo? I'll happily take more pics while I've got the lights still on the tank. If not, I'll have to try and find my old point-n-shoot.

The Planted+ also had the Blue LEDs on as well for a similar balance as your photos.


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## phluid13 (Mar 24, 2015)

There isn't really going to be a good way for you to adjust any camera for the lights you're using to get a completely accurate picture. You could turn white balance compensations off in the camera. iPhone doesn't have the ability to turn it off. Point and shoot should depending on the model. But even if you had it set correctly, if the two fixtures are different kinds of light, for example if one is fluorescent and one is led, you're always going to have some sort of issues and it won't be completely accurate. Mostly you'd have to do it by eye. And even if you did get it correct in the image file, it's going to depend on the users computer screen and calibration methods of their monitors for them to see it accurately. It also depends on the calibration of your own monitor if you're doing post edits to get it right for what it looks like to your eye. What you have is probably good enough. 


pHluid13


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## jeffkrol (Jun 5, 2013)

grizzly_a said:


> Got any tips on setting an iPhone to take a better photo? I'll happily take more pics while I've got the lights still on the tank. If not, I'll have to try and find my old point-n-shoot.
> 
> The Planted+ also had the Blue LEDs on as well for a similar balance as your photos.


AWB will pick a preset function normally.. in this case "probably" one of a number of daylight settings..
After that it is all automatic but equal..

To me your photos look "normal" or at least camera normal w/ uniform processing for the 3.
The planted plus is just a red enhanced RayII, both using 7000k white diodes..

The RayII photo looks right. Once you get a good deal of plant mass, the overall tone gets more balanced.
I still can see the slight "washout" as many talk about. more obvious the less "green wash" in the tank.

Personally the planted plus plants look "more green", the wood more defined ect..
But some of this could be "post processed"

Best thing to do is look at the photo then "reinterpret" it w/ your own eyes.. which is not the same as any camera really..


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