LED lighting

[thatg33kgirl]

Hey, more random nosy questions.

How about LED lighting- does anyone here use em? I hear both good and bad, not looking into them anytime in the near future but thought, hey, might as well ask!!!

If anyone has a cool LED setup I'd love to see pics too!!!
Thanks as always

[jjoos99]

I have been switching my sps tank over to led. I have 2 lights built so far. Both are separate heat sinks with 35 leds mounted to them. I am running a 50/50 mix of whites and blues. I have one more to put together to have my 180 gallon fully lit by leds. I am so far pretty pleased with them. The strength is good. So far the only complaint is with not having a reflector per say as in a halide the blending of light between the 2 lights tend to have a slight shadow. I have a small build post on worc's site and I will post up some pics here if there is interest.
jeff

[aquavista99]

I have been switching my sps tank over to led. I have 2 lights built so far. Both are separate heat sinks with 35 leds mounted to them. I am running a 50/50 mix of whites and blues. I have one more to put together to have my 180 gallon fully lit by leds. I am so far pretty pleased with them. The strength is good. So far the only complaint is with not having a reflector per say as in a halide the blending of light between the 2 lights tend to have a slight shadow. I have a small build post on worc's site and I will post up some pics here if there is interest.
jeff

Jeff, I am sure many Cincy members would appreciate seeing pictures of your DIY LED lighting project on this forum as well. It is definitely worthy of its own thread as well since this is a relatively new method of lighting in the reef community.

[thatg33kgirl]

Agreed!!

[jjoos99]

Here is my second light that i built step by step. I went with alittle smaller heat sink this time and am going to put 35 leds on it. the sink is 8.46" by 14". The leds are glued on by a heat transferable epoxy. The most important part of a high powered led is to keep them cool. That is the reason for the heat sink and a fan. Another important part was planning the routing of the wires and placement of the leds themselves. Take you time with this part. Once they are glued down it is hard to remove them without possibly damaging them. I made a paper copy of the top of my heat sink size and drew out where to glue the leds and how to route the wires.

[jjoos99]

Next you can see the led as they come to you. You break off each led of the holders and keep track of which ones are the blues and the whites. They are also polarity sensitive with a plus on one side and a minus on the other. the leds are glued onto the sink in a staggered order with a white following a blue. leds have drivers that are basically the same as a ballast. Each driver will power approx. 12 leds thus it takes 3 drivers for a 36 led light. You can use just the blues for dawn and dusk lighting.

[Coral Pets]

I have one over the zooanthid tank here at the store. The LEDs really make your zoos, acans, brains, and shrooms really light up. I like the Reef Brite brand. I use 75% blue and 25% white for my display at the fragswaps. The LEDs make great supplemental lighting to t5s and MH.

[jjoos99]

next you transfer the pattern onto the heatsink and glue on the leds with heat transferable epoxy. You need to make sure that the leds are in place properly in regards with both color and plus and minus. Once they are glued down then the soldering iron goes to work. The wires run from negative of one led to positive of the next and keep going that way until you have 12 total leds in a string. the first led will have the positive lead soldered to it coming from the driver and the last in the string will have the negative lead soldered to the negative of the driver.

[jjoos99]

Once all the wiring is done you install what is call optics. These are individual reflectors for each led. they are available in quite a few different angles of reflection. I went with 80deg. optics for a wider pattern and not get the individual spot light pattern. next comes the fan and what type of mounting bracket you are going to use and you are in business. You cant look into these lights. if you do you will be seeing spots for quite some time.

[aquavista99]

If you don't mind me asking, how much does it cost, on average, to build your own LED lighting system?

[aquavista99]

Thanks for sharing, Jeff. Very nice job and very informative!

[imrealdeal01]

I would also love to know a total price for something that size if you dont mind because they look good

[jjoos99]

the leds I got came in diy kits. These are made by Cree which seems to be pretty close to the standard in the hobby for the diy"er. The cost per every 12 leds with driver, optics, and glue is right at $110. So for this light my size with 36 leds will run $330. There are several sizes of heat sinks you can purchase. I have both the 8.5in sink and the 10in sink on my tank right now. The bigger sink is of course more expensive but keeps the leds alot cooler. I think the worst thing about it is it weighs a ton. The sinks can be ordered in what ever length you wish. I believe my 14in by 8in was about $33 plus shipping. Add in a fan and some misc supplies and I would say alittle shy of $400 for the total light. I am planning on 3 lights total for my 180 gallon. It sounds like alot of money but it is one of those things that will actually save you in the long run. You would pobably have over $300 in a one nice halide setup once you purchase the ballast, reflector and bulb. There are several pluses to the leds. No bulb changes, they are reported to last 10,000 hours without a loss of intensity or color. At $70 every 8 months or so for halides it adds up quick. Electricity savings, each led consumes 3 watts, so a light of 36 leds would be just alittle bit over 100 watts verses say 250 for the halide bulb. Heat, the leds are way less in heat output. so if you fight heat from you lighting that alone might be worth it. I can put my hand 6in below the leds and not really feel much of any heat, try that with a halide. these are the suppliers I got my lighting pieces from.

http://www.reefledlights.com Bill is a great guy to deal with who will personally answer each email and any question you might ask. I wouldnt buy from anyone else after dealing from him.
http://www.heatsinkusa.com they have a wide variety of sinks in size and can be cut as long or short as you request.
http://www.quietpcusa.com Is where I got my fans. Decent air movement and you can not hear them at all.
hope this all is helpful
jeff

[jjoos99]

well the results are in. the heat sink with 35 leds came out to be exactly equal to a 10k 250 watt halide. We got about 750 par just below the water surface, 400 at the midlevel of the tank and maintained 200 on the sand bed. My lights are about 10 in. off the water surface and I use 80 degree optics. probably could have gotten alittle better with 70deg optics. I have mine running on 700 mA ballast drivers. Pauls will be even more kick butt since he is using 1000 mA ballast drivers. We tested these readings against my 10k 250 watt bulb and a 20k 250 watt bulb. The readings were all but one and the same of the 10k bulb. When testing the 20k we got right at half of the 10k. so the end results are the led's have the same strength of usuable light that the 10k halide has with more color range of a 15 to 20k color range. After this confirmation I am extremely happy with this project.
jeff