LED cannon upgrade @ marine park- video!

[cr500_af]

ichthyoid;614484 wrote: It's amazing to see how little power we would really need if we had it only shine down on the floor of the tank.

Sanjay made a point of this during his talk, and I commended him afterward for saying so. He mentioned walking into fish rooms and seeing the whole room lit up. The light on the walls and floor will not grow coral.

I was thinking of how to word this best (of course, I was only going to be parroting what Sanjay said), but Bill beat me to it. If we have X amount of light, there are only two ways to increase the lighting in the tank... increase X, or better focus it where we want it.

 

[morganatlanta]

The 70 degree optics on my LEDs really focus the light on the tank bottom. There is almost none on the back wall, so I'm not wasting all that power.

 

[ichthyoid]

Exactly Barry.

We have been spoiled for years and taken the lazy man's way to solve this problem. We bought more powerful lights (increased the watts).

Then we bought chillers to cool the tank.

Then we spent more on the power bill.

Finally a litle sanity is becoming available.

Jenn keeps a RBTA thriving under a 12 watt Ecoxotic LED!

Need I say more?

I have never been a fan of creating 3 problems in order to solve 1.

 

[cr500_af]

Yep! I'm very excited to be using LEDs on my new build, even if I will have to do a little DIY modding to them to get the color I want. I'm going to leave all the whites in it, and just add more blues. Presently I can only get a ~14k look by dimming the whites, which is in effect dimming the PAR as well. Adding blues will do what I want, while not backing off the intensity of the light.

 

[cr500_af]

I have been tossing something else around in my head... reflecting light back into the water instead of "absorbing" it with black background.

"Mirror-like" reflective material is a bad idea IMO due to many fish trying to fight their reflection. I'm thinking the hammertone material (like used in Lumenmax Elite reflectors) would sort of "recover" some light without creating a mirror image.

However, it may well look like complete poo!

EDIT: I wasn't clear, but this is in the context of rear-panel background, or sides if they are not viewing sides.

 

[ichthyoid]

I have sourced 6.5, 10, 15 and 20K as well as 460 nM blue LED's.

I will evaluate 10 watt versions for PAR, etc. then go from there.

We will see...

 

[morganatlanta]

ichthyoid;614555 wrote: I have sourced 6.5, 10, 15 and 20K as well as 460 nM blue LED's.

I will evaluate 10 watt versions for PAR, etc. then go from there.

We will see...

Higher K would be great. The 6.5K CREE "Cool White" really needs just as many watts of Royal Blue added to make the color pleasant to the eye. They look yellow/brown to me otherwise.

 

[ichthyoid]

I have available 10, 20, 50 and 100 watt available. I am starting with the 10 & 20 watt versions for a variety of reasons, cooling being one.

 

[mapleredta]

Charlie, will you be doing a build thread on this?

 

[sharkbait]

Amici;614779 wrote: FYI. Par is not linear for output among wattage. I am about to order a bunch of 50w chips as soon as I decide on a heatsink that may have a prayer of keeping it cool enough. I'll share those results as well.

I want to see this!!! I just fear that I will have to get chiller for the summer for my new setup and I really don't want to go that route. Plus the electric bill savings would be nice as well.

 

[basscyn]

Amici;614898 wrote: I hadn't planned on it but if you wanted to see it then I could.

Do it man!:up:
Got a DIY project in mind myself but would love to see a thread that chronicled a build step by step.