led lighting

[pignoselover]

hi guys,
i spent the day looking around at aquariums looking at led lights and seeing what they look like in real life on a planted tank as well as a coral tanks, and they look great i was just wanting to know has anyone got lead lights on there tanks and what they thought of them.
i also found a US lighting place that sells them at a really good price so as i have to up date my lighting i thought it may be the way to go.

[ILLUSN]

have a read here

http://www.discusforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22222&highlight=
I'm moving my entire fish room and all display tanks over to LED's

I'll be doing a write up as soon as my lexan arrives to finish my prototype.

I sourced my LED's direct from China, so I had to buy in bulk but I got some fantastic prices ($0.88-$2.70) for specific plant friendly wavelengths (440-450nm blue and 660nm red) which you cant do with name brand chips.

still need to so some longevity testing and some direct PAR teasting against 54wT5's but so far its looking good.

bigest thing to remember is that plant utilize spefic wavelengths of light for photosynthesis, matching the out put of LED's to these wavelenghts is the most efficient use of light, but it looks horrible (purple) balancing it with white LED's (significantly less usefull to plants) so it looks presentable is the real challange.

[Exotic Aquatic]

i have been making my own LED fittings for the last 10 months. I buy the "60 light set" ones from ebay, which gets you 60 leds for around $10 INCLUDING POST!!! I have bought different types from around the world in both blue, white, yellow, and made combos, experimenting with look, shimmer, and plant growth.
In my personal experience anubias does best at a blue rich lowlight, accented with the bright white 1w string sets (these are 3 globe modules strung in series and sold as 10 or 20 peice lengths). Mosses etc, need the addition of red/yellow to the blue spectrum, which doesnt look as cool.

I HAVE however now perfected the LED formula with some new technology that has yet to be applied to the aquarium trade, i cant say too much yet (for roughlyk 1-2 weeks anyway) but they are perfect! They are up to 10X brighter than store bought LED's (these are custom manufactured for us in asia and assembled by a big name electricaL company here) and will be fully controllable, in regards to how many lumens output you prefer on the unit itself, plus ours look AWESOME.

If the admin would like i can offer them for sale here once we have finished R&D and have numbers ready for shipping.

Our new Melbourne based "living gallery" will be run entirely on these systems (opening mid 2011, soon!)

[ILLUSN]

NICE WORK!

just wondering why you went with 1w and not 3w?

3w have more penetrance through water, with deeper tanks (50-30 inches) 1w's didn't seem to have any measurable effect on the bottom of the tank (though the ones i used were low grade), i guess you could use narrow optics (30 degree or less) to concentrate the output but you'd expect some degree of "spotting".

[Exotic Aquatic]

1w was for testing purposes, they were cheap and we could buy hundreds. 3w testing also took place, however what we offer now is in a league of its own, cant be compared to any other LED system regardless of watts.

will keep you posted once all is ready.

[swampy1972]

EA,

I'll be very interested in your light units as I'm getting close to setting up a 5x2x2 planted display.. I currently have 3x 150W MH ready to go on to it but I'm keen to find a viable replacement.

[Exotic Aquatic]

No worries Swampy.

Our system for a tank that size would use 36W at max output and can be adjusted down. You probably already know this but i must reiterate not to run any high powered system more than 6-8hours a day, and use a good timer! (mine stuck on last i was away and i came back to a cladophora tank and insomnia tatras!!!)

Also although our system is by far visually better than anything else on the market, spectrum wise its still outperformed by MH for speedy growth, however this can be overcome with the addition of a pink spectrum t5 for the 'morning hours' of your sun cycle, and then the pink alone for the'evening hours'. as a complete regiment this is very close to natural sun activity.

[pignoselover]

that sound great tell me something i have been offerd a 4 panel led set for 200 on ebay from growlights do you know if there any good
adam