LED for main lighting?

[Anonymous]

Best advise...stick with the normal lighting methods until the engineers work out the kinks....its your money and if you want to buy a ton of these little light emitting diodes then go for it...However if your unsure what the results will be than why not stick to conventional methods? better safe than sorry...there are different LEDs with different ratings and why mess around until you find the best "fit"? thats just my take on it...

 

[utahsaltreefer]

LordNikon,
Yes, I agree. I'm buying MH lighting for the tank after speaking with the manufacturer, but think I'll still play around with the LEDs for fun. I think a group of 30 would make a nice actinic spotlight though for a coral. The price is dropping on LEDs now you can get them for around $1 apiece. As promised I'll still post some pics once I get them assembled.

I think in the future (1-3 years) they will have a role as actinics. If they can get the lumens to watts up to 100, it would only take 140 or so to equal the output of some 250 watt MH lights. Here as some interesting articles about the future of solid state lighting. They are being used in cars as headlights now.

http://www.audiworld.com/news/03/geneva ... ent2.shtml

http://www.accidentreconstruction.com/n ... 42803a.asp

 

[ricky1414]

can i mount the audi headlamps over my tank? that would be a cool DIY project!

 

[Anonymous]

utahsaltreefer..check out digikey.com..you might find LEDs cheaper there...if not theres Jameco.com...

 

[zues1]

here is where I got the led's for my moonlights
http://www.lc-led.com/ProductListing.jsp?idDepartment=1 they do have 60deg bright whites

 

[Lofus]

I thought that LEDs had a very limited PAR at depths of greater then 6".

That would be a more limiting factor then anything else I would think.

 

[tangir1]

>... I thought that LEDs had a very limited PAR at depths of greater then 6".

That really depends on the color, not the light source. Water can't tell if the light/photon is from LED rather than a regular light bulb.

green/blue color has the greatest penetration, while red is the worst.

 

[down&dirty]

This is a very interesting discussion. With the new white LEDs that are coming out this should become even more heated. They have now made a new white LED that is powerful enough to be used for automotive headlights without the draw of existing white LEDs. This is accomplished by not using a red/green/blue interface but instead a blue LED surrounded by a yellow phosphorous that turns the blue light white. This requires even less energy and more light. This is obviously my take on things but here is a link to the article that describes the headlights. I am also checking with some manufature's of LEDs to see if I can get some for free to play around with this idea. Hopefully my contacts will be able to get me as many as I need.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/pu ... 04car.html

 

[utahsaltreefer]

Sorry for the long delay in posting the pics. I was on business trips, then family trips, etc. Anyway I wired up the leds and tested them out somewhat. Since I am still in the process of getting everything for my main tanks, I could only do pictures using a small 10 gallon tank I was using to make cement rocks (So they are ugly ) These pics were all taken during the daytime. After working with them, I think that, like many said, they don't YET have a use as main lighting, but I think they would be great for nanos, spotlights for corals, and possibly actinic lighting.

 

[utahsaltreefer]

Both blue and white on. I think the blue is brighter myself.

 

[utahsaltreefer]

The previous pictures were both taken with the same surround lighting. The darkness around the one with them on was the camera adjusting to the light.

 

[utahsaltreefer]

Here's both white and blue from the top of the dinky tank.

 

[utahsaltreefer]

Here's a shot to give some perspective to their light next to ambient light. Yes I know its not much of a test, but my other lights aren't here yet.

 

[utahsaltreefer]

I just had to throw this one is for kicks. Check out the massive power supply for these lights :lol: Of course for long term use and adapter would be used, but these lights have run for over 80 hours so far on these 3 batteries and don't show any sign of being dimmer.

 

[Lostmind]

interesting. led actinic supplementation sounds good

 

[J.Howard]

I have a really simple question to add to this. How long does it take to install each bulb? Will they be plug in sockets or simply soldered to circuit? It sounds pretty time intensive to say the least. Now on a big tank, think about the time it will take to REPLACE each one of those little suckers when they lose intensity. In simple math terms you don't need a PhD in physics to understand:

Single bulb install time x # of bulbs = total install time
Total install time / how much your spare time is worth to you in $/hr
+ possible frustration factor of getting it just right. = Is it really going to save enough money on electricity/ MH bulb replacement to be worth all that time?

Just a simple thought from a simple guy...if it's worth it I suppose it could be the next big thing.

 

[utahsaltreefer]

Yeah, I guess I neglected the time for this. The setup I used was el cheapo brand . If I were going to do this for real, I would buy a breadboard so that the lights could simply be plugged in. Using a breadboard replacing each light would literally take maybe 1-2 seconds. I attached a picture of the breadboard, but you can think of it as a thing used to quickly plug in and take out electronic components.

 

[J.Howard]

Yes, I agree. Breadboard is the way to go and they are simple enough that you can often reroute traces or leads to make it totally custom so ordering a specific length each time you build one is not needed. That makes great sense to me.

 

[warloc4326]

Looked on a few manufacturers sites and was able to find an LED that produced 8,000 lumens, now compared to a MH bulb... producing 11,000 lumens per watt... any futher investigation someone could help with this? BTW the LEDS I found had an angle of 45...

 

[utahsaltreefer]

warloc,
I think you mean 8000 mcd (millicandelas) If you refer to the earlier part in the post you'll see the whole discussion on that conversion.