Show Us Your LED Tanks

[kien]

Originally Posted by Madreefer

Yes LEDs can grow it all. Any tips on how to get a good pic so it does'nt have the cartoon look? With just the basic point and shoot cameras.

That's the trick really, I find taking pics with the point and shoot problematic, even for non LED tanks. Throw in LEDs and the point and shoots really struggle. That is unless you can get a point and shoot that allows you full manual control like Canon's G series (Nikon has an equivalent but I'm not sure what it's called).

Originally Posted by Dearth

The scary thing most people is twofold when it comes to LED lighting first off is the cost a good set of lights will definitely hurt the pocketbook (including DIY lighting)and secondly having powerful enough LEDs to reach the bottom of deeper tanks and having the correct colour spectrum to promote growth and colour.

Once I save up the coinage I will be switching to LEDs on my big tank but that will be awhile in coming.

Cost of entry is definitely high, but there are good LED units that are quite reasonably priced. For example, you can get an AI Sol unit for roughly $400. In my mind that's pretty reasonable. Of course you can easily go up in cost from there to the Mitras at $1200 (retail) per unit. Not everyone needs a $1200 Mitras though. There are plenty of people (as we've seen in this thread) doing quite well with their $400 AI Sols :-)

The issue of having "powerful enough LEDs to reach the bottom of deeper tanks" is an interesting one and one that still confuses me a bit. Whenever I hear of someone running LEDs I typically hear of them having to throttle down their LED lights as low as 50%. Even at those levels they can still easily burn their corals. As for the correct colour spectrum, I don't know if there is a unit that really has the wrong colour spectrum. I've seen beautiful tanks growing SPS with everything from cheap eBay LEDs, to DIY LEDs, to AI Sols, Radeons, Mitras. I've seen nice tanks from pretty much ALL the LED variations now. This someone leads me to conclude that if a tank is struggling with colour or growth that it's not necessarily the light causing the issue. It is easy to blame the light though because it is something that's easy to change, unlike other factors like water chemistry and husbandry.

[Dearth]

I believe the stigma of deep water lighting is a hold over from when LEDs first came out and even though LEDs have been out for several years now you still meet a lot of people who have the doubts that the lights can do as advertised so live with the idea LEDs will not light the bottom of the tank sufficiently even with evidence to the contrary. Then most LFS don't actually carry the good quality lights which enforces in people's minds their rational behind not enough lighting. As a guy who started out in fresh water where lighting was not critical component of the system I count myself as fortunate when I started off in SW I started off with LEDs and don't have the same prejudices as others who used MH and T5s before LEDs came out.

[nrosdal]

Here is a video from a customer who put a couple LEDs above his 6 foot 130G tank.

http://youtu.be/TRh1jUp_r7I

[sphelps]

Originally Posted by kien

Cost of entry is definitely high, but there are good LED units that are quite reasonably priced. For example, you can get an AI Sol unit for roughly $400. In my mind that's pretty reasonable. Of course you can easily go up in cost from there to the Mitras at $1200 (retail) per unit. Not everyone needs a $1200 Mitras though. There are plenty of people (as we've seen in this thread) doing quite well with their $400 AI Sols :-)

Keep in mind you'll need 2 sols for 1 Mitra so really comparing $800 to $1200 which isn't as big of a gap. Then when you compare features like built in controller, full spectrum and so on you may conclude the Mitra is also pretty reasonable

There are lower cost units that get the job done but ultimately you're getting what you paid for. Like the D120s, I had to open the fixture up to change the power cord orientation. Doing so I discovered it's basically just a thin aluminium plate with LEDs directly mounted to that, wired to two basic power supplies with a dimmer and three noisy cheap fans. Pretty obvious why they are so cheap but they do work and whatever I put under them seems to do really well but it's a shallow tank so the output is really low, not sure I'd trust the cooling capabilities at full power.

[kien]

Originally Posted by sphelps

Keep in mind you'll need 2 sols for 1 Mitra so really comparing $800 to $1200 which isn't as big of a gap. Then when you compare features like built in controller, full spectrum and so on you may conclude the Mitra is also pretty reasonable

Yes, it's definitely reasonable if you need all of those features. Not everyone needs all those bells and whistles though. As demonstrated in this thread, there are lots of nice tanks running LED lights without any controllers or full spectrum. I'm not about to tell those people that they need more expensive Mitras :-)

And yes, if you want the same output as a Mitras, then you will have to add additional (cheaper units). But then again, not everyone needs the kind of output that the Mitras provides. There are people dialing down the output of LED units that have less maximum output than the Mitras.

[sphelps]

Originally Posted by kien

Yes, it's definitely reasonable if you need all of those features. Not everyone needs all those bells and whistles though. As demonstrated in this thread, there are lots of nice tanks running LED lights without any controllers or full spectrum. I'm not about to tell those people that they need more expensive Mitras :-)

And yes, if you want the same output as a Mitras, then you will have to add additional (cheaper units). But then again, not everyone needs the kind of output that the Mitras provides. There are people dialing down the output of LED units that have less maximum output than the Mitras.

More of a spread issue than output relating to using multiple units. For example if you need to cover 36x36" you really can't use 1 sol regardless how low your light demands are, unless you hang it unpractically high that is.

[sphelps]

A work in progress but my latest LED tank, seems fit to post it here seeing it's a play on my old LED fluval edge I previously posted