LED upgrade?

[snowmansnow]

k, so about 4 months or so ago I did a DIY pendant, and it now provides light over a frag tank.

I am considering doing my entire 120 LED now, and wondered what you guys would suggest.

The tank is a SPS tank, with very few softies here and there. It is fairly heavily sps stocked, so I will need good quality PAR.

Even since I did the pendant, I've noticed a lot of new LED things out there.. new lamps, new cannons, all sorts of things.

If you were going to outfit your 120 sps tank with LED.. how would you go about it?

How many strips... how many LEDs of what kind on each strip?

Thanks for the advice.

Hopefullly this will change into a build thread really soon

 

[superclown]

Have you looked into the 30w chips i've heard people are using thirds and getting great results

 

[snowmansnow]

hmmm I havent... link please?

 

[superclown]

Just ebay 30w chip leds

 

[snowmansnow]

I'm still afraid of trusting EBAY w my sps tank.. but ill take a look

 

[superclown]

I will see if i can find some trusted sites for you but the last time someone told ne about them that is where they sent me

 

[gnashty]

I would consider a maxspect fixture myself, I am still waiting for the technology to catch up with itself before I take the plunge - hopefully the price will come down when it does.

2 of these should do you up just right....if you are going all out. Ive looked at other fixtures but I like the maxspect because you can change out individual LEDs. There are a few other good brands and models out there someone else could chime in on.

 

[misu]

There's a great article on glasscages about how efficient are the 3W LEDs compared to everything else. I'm exploring some options right now for my 135 and the key led fixtures from fish street are up on my list

 

[gnashty]

misu;577821 wrote: There's a great article on glasscages about how efficient are the 3W LEDs compared to everything else. I'm exploring some options right now for my 135 and the key led fixtures from fish street are up on my list

Yes, those are a good option too. still considering those as well!

 

[jaustin]

I've got a 120g too. If I were to go LED it would be half white, half royal blue, two arrays, dimmable drivers, and 36 LEDs on each array. A mixture of 60 degree optics and 40.

Would be expensive. I'm about to order some from Steve's LED and replace my VHO actinics with them. Steve's LEDs are great and half the price of Cree. They look great too. I'm not worried about intensity (Steve's LEDs aren't proven to be inferrior to Cree) but just color for now. Still have the 400W Ushio 20Ks to provide the growth.

Will let ya know how Steve's LEDs work out.

 

[snowmansnow]

Half white half blue is too blue if you are using the CREE... at least if you run them both at the same %.

ive already completed a project , having more whites than blues, and it is still too blue

b

 

[markl]

I want to get leds as well. but waiting on a cheaper price with a dimmable ballast

 

[rtackett]

I just replaced my MH with 120 W LED units I got from fishcollections.com. I am very pleased - the units were on sale for $350 and jimmy has units upto 180 w.

 

[jcusmarine]

Maxspect G2 has been great for me. Very happy.

I would like to tweak the LED's in the future to try attain T5 Fiji Purple Color, so I may add 2 x 3w Red LED's and I may use blending optics. I may add a couple of Cyan 3w or possibly play with adding Cree Blues etc. For now, the out the box fixture is still awesome IMO.

For me, my tank is only 18" deep, so I have the light near the water surface and have decided against degree optics to help direct the light output.

 

[darcurr]

Might want to have a look at rapidled.com They lean more to the DIYer.

 

[hiimsean]

i've been reading lately too on DIY LEDs. there's a lot of good info and builds on nano-reef. there are some good pre-made ones, AI, but are atleast twice as expensive as DIY

 

[misu]

HiImSean;582674 wrote: i've been reading lately too on DIY LEDs. there's a lot of good info and builds on nano-reef. there are some good pre-made ones, AI, but are atleast twice as expensive as DIY

actually I've seen a few decent fixtures that get close or even beat DIY and that's without counting the time it takes to solder 200 LEDs

 

[lowfidelity]

This may be a silly question but how long can you run those LEDs before you need to replace them due to spectrum shift?

 

[superclown]

lowfidelity;590576 wrote: This may be a silly question but how long can you run those LEDs before you need to replace them due to spectrum shift?

If you don't overdrive your led's past the recommended rating led's can last up to about 7 to 10 years without needing replacing from what I understand

 

[pwest]

I built up a prototype moonlight with some 1W royal blue LEDs and was pretty happy with what I got. The show stopper (in terms of cost) turned out to be the the heatsink! So, make sure you factor that into the cost of your DIY project before you start to order other parts.

-Phil