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-   -   DIY LEDs in Canada? (http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=67877)

Strickland_673 09-08-2010 05:14 PM

DIY LEDs in Canada?
 
I have been looking for a company that manufactures/sells DIY LED retrofit kits in Canada. I have found a good site RapidLED but they only ship within USA. So does anyone have a contact or company that does such work as RapidLED???

Ok so I found out that Rapid LED does ship to Canada!!! this is the system I am looking at:

http://www.rapidled.com/servlet/the-...ium-LED/Detail

SO with this setup on a 25g (15" deep) what will this light sustain, with my 2X24W T5HO Hagen Glo??

Thanks.

Strickland_673 09-08-2010 10:58 PM

NOBODY?

NanoHuman 09-08-2010 11:09 PM

I built my own CREE high power LED system but could not find anything available in Canada.

Everything is in the US.

marcingo 09-08-2010 11:09 PM

Friend of mine is planning on ordering from RapidLED as well.

The systems come with Cree bulbs which are supposed to be the best.

According to my research the XP-G Cree is the best.

Then you decide on your lens 40 degree 60 degree 80 degree and 100 degree.

Lower the degree the more concentrated the light the smaller the spread.

I personally have just ordered a light fixture from China that runs on Cree XPE bulbs at 3 watts. Most systems are brought down to 1 watt to extend their useful life.

I believe most good systems run on these Cree bulbs.

One thing to remember from what I have read on LED is that the watts per gallon rule does not apply. To the human eye the LEDs might not look as bright as the metal halide but some people have reported their corals have bleached due to too much light from the LEDs even though it looked like it was dimmer than the MH.

It is still pretty underused in the hobby so finding info is difficult.

I started a thread on a 10 gallon nano that I will be running these cree bulbs on to inform people of my findings. My setup is 10 (12k) Cree white bulbs and 2 453 nm blue. All are 3 watt

We will see what happens.

Hope that might be some useful info for you.

Big Tang 09-09-2010 03:01 AM

Try reef led lights .com

StirCrazy 09-09-2010 03:24 PM

I don't know if I would get that kit as it has the "G" bulbs and seeing as they are a lot more powerfull than the "E"s I am wondering how much spotting you'll get. also you only get optics for the "E"s why????

as for this kit being enough on your 25, depends. one kit alone on there will look real bad, two kits with no optics might work, but idealy I would be guessing at 3 kits for a 25 and you will be good to keep anything. also looking at the drivers they are only 700mA instead of 1000mA and they are not dimable.

so I was looking around the site and found this kit.
http://www.rapidled.com/servlet/the-...LED-DIY/Detail

I would sell the T5's and then get this one for the 25 gal tank. but the only change I would make is to buy one more driver so you have 2 for the white and 2 for the blue (would cost and extra 30 bucks) that way you can dim the colors independent.

A 25 gal tank is a little deeper (18") so if you wanted to keep SPS you could go with the 40 degree optics and you will have all the PAR you need and the ability to dim white or blue to get the exact color you like. if you not a big SPS person then choose the 60 ot 80 degree lense.

Steve

Ron99 09-09-2010 04:12 PM

This has come up a few times and sadly there are no suppliers in Canada. A few places could probably special order some but you'll probably end up paying more then you would just ordering yourself. Heatsinks are more difficult. I believe Heatsink US will ship to Canada but it is expensive. I found some used surplus heatsinks on eBay for less then half of what it would have cost to buy new. Also, check out nanotuners.com as they have LEDs (XP-Es and XR-Es which will be plenty of light for a small tank), drivers and optics at good prices as well as the adhesive thermal pads that make assembly far easier.

If you plan to use these in addition to your T5s then you could do two rows of LEDs, one in front and one behind the T5s which would probably be in the middle. If you are going all LED then add a 3rd row to the mix. Space the LEDs 2 to 2.25 inches apart and use 60 degree optics for that depth of tank. You can leave a bit of extra room at the ends (3 to 4 inches). So for a 24" wide tank I would use 8 to 10 LEDs per row. so that gives you 16 to 20 LEDs for two rows or 24 to 30 LEDs if you are going three rows. You can use the ELD 60-48 drivers. Each will drive up to 13 LEDs so for a 24 LED setup you could go with two drivers, one for blue and one for white. These are dimming drivers to so you could set up a nice sunrise/sunset effect with a controller of some sort. You buy the P or the D version depending on how you want to end up dimming them.

Twinn 09-09-2010 09:06 PM

+1 to Ron99's post and here is my .02

It seems everytime I read one of these LED posts everyone makes a large point of stating use Cree LED's. Here is the problem with Cree LED's.

There is a large difference in the individual quality between the CREE LED's even if you order just XP-G LED's. Now before you get all upset I will explain.

Cree themselves grade there LED into different "bins" as in "bin A", "bin B", "bin C" and so on. The closer to "bin A" the more likely the LED is to the spec sheet and the better the quality of the LED itself.

Take cool whites for example. This is why when you wire up a DIY LED fixture one cool white light will look white while the next cool white light will have a more yellow tint in its color even thought they are techinically the same LED.

This will be way more noticable if you order your lights at different times ensuring they come from different batches from Cree.

Now Cree is still the industry leader and makes the best LED lights but, people just need to remember that not all Cree LED lights are equal.

Ron99 09-09-2010 11:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Twinn (Post 547214)
+1 to Ron99's post and here is my .02

It seems everytime I read one of these LED posts everyone makes a large point of stating use Cree LED's. Here is the problem with Cree LED's.

There is a large difference in the individual quality between the CREE LED's even if you order just XP-G LED's. Now before you get all upset I will explain.

Cree themselves grade there LED into different "bins" as in "bin A", "bin B", "bin C" and so on. The closer to "bin A" the more likely the LED is to the spec sheet and the better the quality of the LED itself.

Take cool whites for example. This is why when you wire up a DIY LED fixture one cool white light will look white while the next cool white light will have a more yellow tint in its color even thought they are techinically the same LED.

This will be way more noticable if you order your lights at different times ensuring they come from different batches from Cree.

Now Cree is still the industry leader and makes the best LED lights but, people just need to remember that not all Cree LED lights are equal.

Yes you are correct that the chips vary somewhat when produced so Cree does bin them according to output as well as colour temperature. But it's not as simple as A is best and down from there is worse. The binning codes for XP-E LEDs can be seen here:

http://www.cree.com/products/pdf/XLampXP_B&L.pdf

Many of us used Q5 bin XR-Es in the past which had very good output. I believe the XR-Es only went to an R2 bin and where only slightly brighter then Q5s at a higher cost.

Ron99 09-09-2010 11:51 PM

Just to clarify as well, binning has nothing to do with the "quality" of the LED or how long it will last etc. It has to do with the light output and colour temperature.


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