LED lights

[freezetyle]

Ron. where did you order those LED from?

[Ron99]

Originally Posted by freezetyle

Ron. where did you order those LED from?

I bought them all through a group buy on nano-reef.com so we got a very good deal. nanocustoms sells some for a decent price along with drivers and optics etc. You could also try ledsupply.com as I have ordered buckpucks from them and service was good.

Originally Posted by StirCrazy

they look like there more of a semi conductor specilist type thing. and water cooled ones.. didn't see anything that wasn't way overkill and probably to much money also.

Steve

Look under the aluminum extrusion section. Looks like there are several potentially good ones but it is a matter of price and minimums.

[naesco]

Originally Posted by Ron99

My Pico is the iReef from the last nano contest; about 2 gallons for the display portion. Here is the link to the thread where you can see the DIY LED setup:

http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=53597

It's really not hard to build your own and is much more cost effective then buying a fixture. For a shallow Pico with easy corals you could probably get away with some of the cheaper fixtures using 1 watt LEDs but 3 watt LEDs are preferable. Avoid any of the fixtures using less than 1 watt emitters, especially the ones with the regular 5mm LEDs. They may look bright to your eye but they have very little usable PAR for the corals.




The thing I don't like about the Maxspect lights is that they use a few single 30W white emitters rather than an array of good quality 3W emitters. The 30W ones are not very efficient in terms of output and heat and not a good choice for aquarium lighting. Personally I wouldn't buy one.



Heatsinks is a problem. The few electronics suppliers I found that could get one were very expensive. I ended up buying 3 large used ones on eBay that will do the trick for me.

Maybe we should set up a local LED DIY group

Ron can you expand further on your comments on the Maxpect LED lighting. I am looking for lighting particularly blue lighting which will optimize the florescense of particularly LPS coral. On the basis of their article, it appears they would fit the bill. Why would the wattage of the emitters matter? Why would efficiency matter and wouldn't the heat sink be designed to take the heat?
Thanks

[Ron99]

Most of that comes from what I have gleaned from the LED expert at nano-reef.com. The problem with the high wattage LEDs is that if you look at their lumen/watt output it is actually far less than a good 3 watt Cree XR-E for example (not to mention the new XP-G series).

These numbers are from what I remember off the top of my head so don't take them as hard fact. The typical 30 watt LEDs produce around 300 to 350 lumens vs. well over 100 lumens for a 3 watt cree XR-E. So 3 times the light output but 10 times the power consumption and higher heat production. Very poor efficiency for the 30 watt ones.

Also, they are trying to produce a good spread of light with good PAR and penetration with 4 emitters of 30 watts with no optics which will not give as good a spread and penetration as a larger number of 3 watt LEDs spread out over your tank. Now add some optics to the 3 watt LEDS and you get higher effective PAR and penetration and they will blow away the performance of the smaller number of high wattage LEDs. They are saving money and thus producing a cheaper fixture by using a smaller number of inferior LEDs. If you want MH equivalent lighting then stick to something using Luxeon or Cree emitters with good coverage and optics to increase penetration and have higher PAR at depth. Cree are the market and technology leaders in terms of output and efficiency. The Luxeons are also quite good but a bit behind Cree from my understanding.

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by Bugsy

Anyone here have the new LED lights on their tanks??

I have been reading about these lights, the so called replacement oneday for MH. Just curious if anyone has them and what your opinion is using them on a reef tank.

just a tidbit. they are not a "so called replacment" for mh, t5, ect.. they are a very viable alternative to them which can produce the same lighting levels if done right.

the reason you don't see a lot of premade LED lights is that one company holds a patent for the way there done which is preventing any other company from makeing a lighting system with a controler. which is why solaris went out of business. the only way areound this is by selling DIY kits or you can just buy all the parts your self and build one.

so if you want to get the output of a 250 watt HQI set up it can be done easy, you just need a good heat sink, good drivers, a wack of leds, and optics, and the skill to put it togeather. its not cheep to start off with but in the long run it works out to be very cheep.

for me to do a tank with a 12X30 opening I am looking at 400 to 600 bucks (closer to 600 porobably) but when you think about it I will have higher PAR levels than a 250watt HQI, no heat transfered to the water and no bulb cvhanged for 15 years?

if I were to do a 250 watt HQI on that tank it would cost me 300 to get started then 100/year for bulbs so there is 1000-1500 (10 to 15 years)
plus I would need a chiller so another 700.00 for a total of 200 to 2500.

but with the leds I am also getting infanate color as they are dimable and I can dim the white and the royal blue seperatly so I can pick the color I like, and if in a few days I decide I want it more white I can. Also the drivers I am looking at use a 0-10v signal for the dimming so if I wanted to put togeather a PLC, I could have simulated sunrise/sets with the colors shifting also. because I am using 4 drivers, I will b abvle to change the intensity in 1/2 the tank also so if I get new corals, I can place them on one side and dim it down and gradualy bring the light levels up over a week or so to get them used to the lighing levels I want.

the only problem is (and it maynot be a problem but rather a benifit) is you have to build everything, even your housing which can open the doors for some very creative looking lighting systems.

Steve