LED lighting
- Thread starter jusney
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I am using a Current USA Powerbrite LED strip to light the refugium of my 60 gallon reef. These are available in 10K, actinic, and half 10K/half actinc. I wouldn't think there'd be an issue using these to light a pico or nano, a long as it is not too big. they are very bright, and many people use these to supplement light in their larger reef setups.
My challenge with these are they are too long. That's why we were looking to build a setup that fits our application. So I guess I am looking for someone who has built their own seup so I can see it in person. We are looking at ready built kits as well and like the R2 blue kit but it's not available with white LEDs. So we'll see.
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Chris at Einstein uses them, and I believe can sell them.
Been away for a while, time to catch up. Stevhav, I have seen actual tanks with LED lighting and that's why I want this type of lighting. It is the actual wiring and hook up that I am interested in seeing done. The systems that I have seen were somewhat sealed systems and I am interested in like a retro system.
Thank you for the offer.
Mark
Thank you for the offer.
Mark
Ive taken a few of the solaris lights apart and they arent too complicated. If your good at soldering you should be able to make a decent retrofit. The biggest thing that I remember through the design part was when they were trying to get the light spread in the clusters to work for them. They made several series of the solaris and they all seemed to work fine. The power supplies I think were thier biggest faults...get that down and you should be good.
djkermitthefrog
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i have custom leds on my tank , that i built , i have pink on my girls tank , and blue and black light on my tank. But you are talking about using 100 or so leds.. that is a whole lot of soldering..
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I may have missed it but what tank is this for? Nanotuners just released their new LED lids for most popular nanos. They seem to be very nice and they make bang up stuff. I have their 3.18 mod for my 14 gal biocube it work great and was very easy to install.
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ares;398824 wrote: they put out about 80lumens/watt, most of them being around 3watts at full bore.
250w MH in the 14k spectrum puts out around 15000lumens, ~60lumens/watt.
as a result, you need approx 30 white LEDs per foot of tank to compare to a 250w MH setup(presuming you put 1 250mh per 2' of tank) and blues put out about half the output, so a ideal scenario would be 15 white and 30 blue per foot.
just to help you with the math.
obviously you wouldnt put a 250w MH on a nano tank(or would you...) so adjust accordingly lol.
Wow! That's a lot of LEDs to equal the 250w MH.
What about the plasma bulbs that were mentioned here a few months ago, any news on them?
So say for a 70W on a Pico, you'd need 1/4 the LEDs, figure 4 white and 8 blue. That doesn't seem like it'd be near as bad and could easily handle a small tank. How many LEDs do the Buck Pucks drive?
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The output of a particular led are directly related to how hard you drive them. When choosing a led make sure the lumen per watt stated is based on the same as the ones you are comparing. The life expectancy of a led is shortened the higher you drive them as well. When figuring the amount needed base your calculations on 750ma instead of 1000ma.Cree xp-g are expected out this fall and will produce 139 lumen per watt at 350ma!! They will produce 345 lumen per watt at 1000ma! That is around 35% more than the brightest available now. Keep in mind your heat sink needs with the leds as well since keeping them cool is the secret to their longevity. The optics are something else that requires some research as well.
this is what I got from nanotuners, 3 white and 3 blue plus the controller pictured that they said it can drive 6 leds.
should I wire all six in serial or make 2 serial strings of 3 each that are hooked in parallel? can't find voltage specs on the leds.
I plan on mounting them on that processor cooler and use the fan only if needed
objections?
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should I wire all six in serial or make 2 serial strings of 3 each that are hooked in parallel? can't find voltage specs on the leds.
I plan on mounting them on that processor cooler and use the fan only if needed
objections?
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<legend> Attached files </legend>
