Aquarium LED

[jgoal55]

I was told there was a forum discussion on here about these lights:

http://www.aquariumled.com">www.aquariumled.com</a>

the design is really cool and simple and I am getting lazier in my life so the less I have to do the better. Overall, its a similar cost to the 8 bulb T5 Icecap retrofit I was thinking of setting up....

any thoughts? can someone point me to prior discussions?

 

[roundman]

Saw these at MACNA. They looked very good. Little pricey but good.

 

[jgoal55]

yeah but a whole lot less than a Solaris and about the same as a Retrofit with a lot less work. Of course, you could find retrofit kits used....

 

[jgoal55]

ares;247861 wrote: for 42 watts, not bad.

but for almost $400? no sir

might cost similair to an 8 bulb T5 ice cap setup, but an 8 bulb T5 setup will light 8 of tank with 6-1000watts fairly easily, while that bulb there has acceptable par for a 15g nano

any thing deeper than 12" would be lackluster, and youd need 1 for every foot or so of tank. plus, the spectrum of all white LEDs is not astheticly optimal. it needs some blue LEDs, but that would further hurt par.

when I called they told me 1 bulb every 2ft but yeah the PAR reading is a little low it seems. Thats what worried me. I think I could do better with T5's par wise. But their growth pictures are great it seems. Question is where were those corals in the tank??

And yeah I was referring to an Icecap set up

 

[jgoal55]

yeah....i agree. but i refuse to go halide so will 6 or 8 T5 bulbs on an icecap set up wipe the floor with it as well?

 

[mojo]

You can't compare different lighting configuration based on watts. Wattage is simply the power required to run the light, not the output of the light. Metal Halides are about 98% inefficient, so only about 2% of a 400w metal halide is converted to light, or 8watts of energy in the form of light. This is why MH's are so hot.

The larger LED's are not quite as efficient as the smaller ones, but you're still looking at 90%+ efficiency. Assumign 90% efficiency on a 42w LED setup == 37w of energy in the form of light. Even if you assume only 20% efficiency, that's still more light generated than the example metal halide above.

Having said all that, I'm not blown away by the PAR readings, either. I think LED technology will be great when it gets here, but it's not quite ready for our tanks yet, IMO. Technology will progress and prices will drop - it's only a matter of time.

 

[jgoal55]

true. I am not well educated enough on light. I have no idea how wattage correlates with Par output, and how the Kelvin rating translates to blue of yellow, etc.

All I know is that I want to be able to keep some color popping SPS. And I'd like to do it without Halides (there are plenty of examples out there, though more so in the T5 range, not LED).

I guess overall it boils down to Can two of these bulbs handle hi light SPS in a standard 90 (18" deep I believe)? If not, the answer is pretty simple. T5's all the way.

Of course the other thing to consider is that realistically I can probably only fit 6 T5's with reflectors in the canopy of a 90 so it's more worth comparing to 6, not 8

 

[mojo]

Jgoal55;247885 wrote: true. I am not well educated enough on light. I have no idea how wattage correlates with Par output, and how the Kelvin rating translates to blue of yellow, etc.

The two can't be directly correlated - there's simply too many factors. There are 175w 6500k bulbs that give higher PAR than 1000w 20k bulbs. Factor in reflector design, etc, and there's no direct comparison. Generally speaking, everything else being equal (same manuf, same reflector, same ballast, same color temp bulb), you'll get higher PAR with higher wattages, but that's about all you can really say.

All I know is that I want to be able to keep some color popping SPS. And I'd like to do it without Halides (there are plenty of examples out there, though more so in the T5 range, not LED).

Of course the other thing to consider is that realistically I can probably only fit 6 T5's with reflectors in the canopy of a 90 so it's more worth comparing to 6, not 8

Then you're best bet is probably to put 6 T5's in there and overdrive the bulbs. There are some T5 experts on here with a lot more experience than me on that subject, though!

 

[mojo]

ares;247905 wrote: I believe your numbers are incorrect.

LEDs put out roughly 80-100lumens/watt.

Halides at 5500k put out roughly 100lumens/watt.

I stand corrected. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LED">Wikipedia</a>:
[QUOTE=]The highest efficiency high-power white LED is claimed[IMG]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LED#cite_note-26">[27]</a> by Philips Lumileds Lighting Co. with a luminous efficiency of 115 lm/W (350 mA).[/QUOTE]And [IMG]http://www.venturelighting.com/TechCenter/Metal-Halide-TechIntro.html">here</a>:

[QUOTE=]<span style="font-family: Times"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 12px">Metal halide lamps generate 65-115 lumens per watt,</span></span></span>[/QUOTE]
I would like to see the numbers at the color temps that we normally use, however.


[QUOTE=]I assure you if you were to get 500w of LEDs together, youd have just about as much heat as the MH, though youd have a good bit more visible light, and almost no IR or UV to speak of.[/QUOTE]Hmm- you can't have both here. If you have a certain amount of power going into the system, you're going to have the same amount coming out, either in the form of light or heat (unless those LED's are generating some other form of energy I'm not familiar with!). IE- if the efficiency is the same, then you won't have more light but less heat - it's got to all add up. Otherwise, you're breaking the laws of thermodynamics... :)

 

[mojo]

As a followup, I found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficiency">this page</a>, which lists efficiencies for different types of light. My quote on the 2% was me remembering an incandescent bulb, which is obviously not a halide.

For comparison, T5's have an output of 70-100 lm/watt. What'd be interesting is how the reflector effects all this, since we're most interested in how it affects our tanks, and reflectors will play a very large role in this.

 

[george]

Solaris (and Aqua Illumination) fixtures are high buy-in, but you're getting many more things than just the bare bulb these guys have. You get a complete fixture with cooling and a killer controller that can create an environmental effect that not even the best Aquacontroller or RK can do with this bulb.

 

[skriz]

I tested that bulb at macna. It was quite crap. Actual par was poor and the colour was bad.