LED lighting project

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
I just don't understand the need for these giant heatsinks with the LED's... LED's produce ZERO wasted energy through heat. The only heat should be coming from the power supply/transformers, so why not just mount those seperately? Seems much easier & cleaner than those big heatsinks. I must be missing something.
 
To be honest, LED's DO produce heat, but with the numbers needed for a freshwater setup, minimal thought needs to be used. Just mount them to a metal surface and you'll be ok. However, when you cluster together the quantities needed to keep SPS corals in a salt setup, heat builds quickly and you MUST use some type of active cooling. The big heat sink pictured earlier is way overkill, as he said, it was just laying around.

Scott
 
High power leds are a much different beast than standard leds. When driven hard they do put off a good amount of heat which will break them down quickly. It is emitted through the back of the LED into the heatsink rather than given off into the tank. On my other array (same heatsink as pictured earlier) I thought I could get away with just it, but had to add a fan. It has 22 3w leds over 24" and gives off about the same heat as the 100w pc it replaced, but to a led that is detrimental.

If you are interested take a look at cree manufacture specs. Mounted on a minimal heatsink they can quickly overheat when driven at 350ma. Typically they are driven at close to 1000ma and in a very tight cluster in aquarium aps. When running several hundred $ of leds playing it conservative seems sensible.
 
Hey, What a fantastic idea! I have a 5ft Luminaire and my wife hates it as it gives of so much light into our living room. Which i find just spoils the over all look of the tank, just want to able sit in the dark at night with a nice light from the tank.

So just one quick question: I have Central Cichlids, i know they don't like too much light. However i like having some plants, so what do you recommend?

Thanks in advance.
 
No, the tank is 6ft, but the walls where we live are no good and the fllor to ceiling height is around 13 ft.

The light is sitting 2" above the tank on wood at one end, the other i've managed to get a fixing to hang it about 1 foot off the tank.

I thought about putting water proof LEDs in the tank, but i would still want to keep some plants. So at the minute i'm just trying to work the best way of going about building a hood with the LED lights in it. Only problem is that i'll need the hood to be light and easy to remove so i can get in and clean them etc.
 
I can tell you the 12 LED's I have on my tank are enough to grow algae, but it is slow enough my fish keep it in check. It is no where near bright enough to sustain plant life. I would shoot from 24-48 depending on what your budget looks like. If I were setting it up for salt, I would be looking from 48-72, depending on what I wanted to keep.

Scott

Scott
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
MonsterFishKeepers.com
Top Bottom