LED Lighting
- Thread starter Anubis1
- Start date
I did ages ago, did 100 white leds, think they were 12000mcd, to the eye it looked very bright in an darkened room, however when I had 4-55w 10000k PC bulbs turned on you could hardly tell if the LEDs were on or off, and at that point I decided I didn't want to bother.
I am working on an array right now. 100 white, 100 blue, 50 UV. I will let you know how it goes. I can already tell you just from what I have seen so far that 250 LED's will not cover much space. You need them to be pretty close together to look nice. I am probably going to have to buy about 300 more to cover the space I want to.
I was looking to cover the top of my Aquapod24. Just for fun and to see how bright it really is, not really for a permanant lighting solution (unless it looks awesome). I forget the actual dimensions, but it was something like 20 inches by 12 inches. Right now I am just messing with a small 6 by 6 part of that large area. I figure if that is as far as I get then I can use the 6 by 6 for a refuge light or something. If the 6 by 6 looks cool then I will order some more LED's and make the larger version. I'm using egg-crate for the frame. Using one LED per side of each square inside the Egg-crate is nowhere near the density that a lot of people claim that I need. But if you look at the picture you can see that only 12 LED's can light up my ceiling pretty good at a distance of about 6 feet. Here is a picture with only 12 LED's with all the lights in my apartment turned out. Those LED's are spread over an area of about 3 inches by 1.5 inches. So just imagine what 20 by 12 would look like 8O
Attachments
Well if you have time to read 32+ pages of Do It Yourself LED Tank Lighting then check out.......
http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.p ... opic=57855
It has basically anything you would need to know. Also, a good link for LED power and resistance calculators and stuff is....
http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz
http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.p ... opic=57855
It has basically anything you would need to know. Also, a good link for LED power and resistance calculators and stuff is....
http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz
I would have no problem reading through all the pages if I just new that LED lighting is something I can afford... What is the price range to put a system like that together? If you would rank all the different lighting systems available (MH, Compacts, etc.), considering efficiency x price, how would the rank be (1st, 2nd, 3rd.... best options for an economic and efficient system)
led lighting I would rate the lowest of all .. simply because it is SOOOO new (on a large scale) that we really don't know what the long term advantages / disadvantages are.
If I were going to DIY a lighting fixture for my tank I would definitly do a DIY retrofit MH system.
B
If I were going to DIY a lighting fixture for my tank I would definitly do a DIY retrofit MH system.
B
We may end up doing that... lol.. won't know until he researches everything some more!
But he is having fun trying to figure it all out.. to see if it will put out enough light and how cost effective it will be...
psst... don't tell him.. but this is one way to get him hooked on the tanks!
But he is having fun trying to figure it all out.. to see if it will put out enough light and how cost effective it will be...
psst... don't tell him.. but this is one way to get him hooked on the tanks!
Yeah, the cost savings of LED's is in power consumption and long life. If you run them at the right voltage, they "SHOULD" last over 10 years. So that saves on bulb costs. And they use a LOT less power, so that saves on electricty. But there is a LOT of cost up front to make/buy an array. But if you are willing to pay for that up front then you should save that cost back when you don't replace bulbs every 6 months or whatknot. Also, the light is all focused down to about a 20 degree field of view. So you dont get any loss of light upwards or sideways as can be seen in flourecents and halides and such. No need for any sort of reflectors since all the light goes directly down. So you need less total "wattage" from your lamp to get the same efficiency. Bulbs will burn out, but the way you wire an array makes that not a big deal at all. 99% of your LED's will keep going when that 1 or 2 burn out. You can usually replace those if you want without much work depending on how you constructed your array. The way I have made mine makes it as easy as pulling a superglued LED off of the egg-crate frame.
That link with the "billion pages" from the nano-reef forum talks about the actual numbers and facts and figures. They have charts and graphs and everything. So don't take my word for the apparent awesomeness of LED's.
But yeah, it is a really new concept, so be aware of that and don't throw "ALL" your money into it if you go the LED route. I have heard/read stories of arrays looking great, growing coral, and working great at first but then turning crappy in a year or two.
That link with the "billion pages" from the nano-reef forum talks about the actual numbers and facts and figures. They have charts and graphs and everything. So don't take my word for the apparent awesomeness of LED's.
But yeah, it is a really new concept, so be aware of that and don't throw "ALL" your money into it if you go the LED route. I have heard/read stories of arrays looking great, growing coral, and working great at first but then turning crappy in a year or two.
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