Cool Aquarium Lighting

[CanadianGuy]

Hi all, I hope it's not taboo to link to another forum, and/or that doing so will overwhelm their server, but I thought at least some of you would love to see this.

On a local aquarium forum I go on, someone has posted their custom made LED/T5 light setup for their saltwater tank. This person obviously put a lot of engineering into it, using some sort of high-end drivers and Luxeon style LEDs (not sure if that's what they're called still?).

I don't know what percentage the LEDs actually have an effect on the coral growth, as I'm guessing they still don't rival the output of typical marine lighting (Metal Halide) but this person said the growth has changed noticeably since it was installed.

Please remove this if it was a bad idea. Thanks!

 

[doctaq]

nano-reef is big on led lighting for reef tanks, some people have good results, some not so good, part of the problem for sure is that they blast thier tanks with too much light for coral, people are running crees at 1000ma and optics and the whole jazz.

heres my tank
http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2130917#post2130917

the growth has amittedly been poor but i am just a beginner, a year ago sps and lps and kh was all a foreign language to me

the guys tank should be an interesting experiment since its still full of frags, are you a reefer?

 

[CanadianGuy]

Nope, no reefs in the near future for me, I have little kids I have a 20 gallon community tank that's been up for about 2 years now, and a 55 that I was given :twothumbs but have yet to get it running.

I'm in the process of re-sealing it, so once that's done I'm going to delve into cichlids! I want to go the whole nine yards with this tank; fancy substrate, over-filtration, nice driftwood and lava rock, etc.

Saltwater stuff is interesting, but it looks expensive and time consuming (both of which I have little of these days, heheh)

I'll check out your stuff now, then have to get to bed!

See ya!

 

[CanadianGuy]

Sorry, i see the link was removed and my suspicions confirmed. Terribly sorry.

 

[doctaq]

ive had good results with 18 leds covering a 55 gal, you could set up a serious planted tank for less than 1 watt per gallon.

 

[jason 77]

Here is my led lit tank. 9 ebay 1 watt cree type LEDs. This set up was my first high power led project I had attempted, it has been going strong for about 3 years now. The pictures below are from when I first made it. I am currently planing a redo for my fish tank as far as lighting goes as I have learned quite a bit from this forum and feel I can do a much better job a second time around.

 

[omni96]

I thought about setting up some water resistant led strips in my terrarium but haven't got to that yet.
I think that leds are a great idea because they take so little space comparing to other traditional lights, and led strips are so easy to mount and setup which makes them even better.

What you think?

 

[doctaq]

if you are looking to grow any plants in your terr, it would be worth it to upgrade to high powered leds, cree or luxeon

 

[omni96]

if you are looking to grow any plants in your terr, it would be worth it to upgrade to high powered leds, cree or luxeon

Don't you think led strips are strong enough?
They don't have the old type of led...

 

[doctaq]

5mm leds tend to be pretty weak, there is a discussion of growing plants with leds around here somewhere

 

[omni96]

http://cgi.ebay.com/White-12V-30cm-...hts-Strip-/110575339490?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0

Not the 5mm
These are the leds I was talking about

 

[blasterman]

I'm in the process of building some high powered reef lights for some fellow reef buffs, and it's absurdly easy. Since I already have experience working LEDs beyond 3watts I can rival metal halide - no problem - 3watt's are for sissies. Corals want far blue light - lots of it, and LEDs are good at that. T5 isn't my thing for fish tanks since it creates a diffuse and rather bland light source. The advantage with T5 is you can customize with different types of tubes.

With freshwater, things are different. You don't need actinic, and fresh water plants aren't as light hungry as acropora. What I found is regular cool white emitters like the big XP-Gs or Bridgelux 402s strung in a narrow strip across the tank middle looks positively incredible. With reefing, we constantly argue about lighting and colors and I'm convinced cool-white based reef lights actually create problems. However, with freshwater, just use 3watt Cool whites and C-channel. People will rave about your tank and cool-white pulls out nice colors in fresh water fish.