Led lighting

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sgibby88

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Jan 5, 2014
75
0
0
south jersey
I wanna go led for my lighting but with so many options to choose from I have no idea where to even begin to pick. Just out of curiosity what are you people running with led wise and how do you like it? Meaning brand and setup wise like all white any moonlight or reds or greens? Just trying to get a feedback on peoples opinions light wise. I was looking at centrals led light with the programs but an arm and a leg seems crazy to me price wize.

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Please tell us more about your time in a cave.
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I'm running LEDs that I pieced together myself.

I agree there are a lot of different kits out there, and its hard to make a choice. I think most of the kits are pretty good, even the ones from China. As long as a kit uses CREE LEDs, and it tells you exactly how many watts of light it puts out, then its probably worth buying.

For reference, for a planted tank, you should get between 1 and 2 watts per gallon of LED light. For non planted, .5 watts per gallon is enough to provide good light.

I have a planted 55g tank, and I had 128w of florescent tubes (4 X 32w 4' lamps), and I switched to ~70 watts of CREE LEDs, and I think its as bright if not brighter than the old florescent setup I had, although my florescent setup also didn't have very good reflectors.

For moonlights, I would buy some cheapo LED blue ribbon lights for like $20 or less on ebay, and just leave them on 24/7. You don't need them very bright at night, and you can't see them when the other lights or on. You don't need anything fancy.

Another guy posted that he bought lights from this website. I've never seen them before, but their products look legit, and they have good prices. I like that they include everything including the heat sink, and you just glue the lights on and wire everything up.
http://www.aquastyleonline.com/
 
My planted 220 is lighted with parts from Steve's LEDs. I have a total of 84 Philips Luxon 3 watt LEDs on three light bars. There are 14 cool whites, 28 neutral whites, 28 warm whites, and 14 royal blues. If I had to do it again I would replace half of the royal blues with some reds and greens (maybe tristars). Each color has an indipendently dimmable driver to balance the light temperature and the whole thing is controled by an Arduino Duemilanove for sunrise/sunset simulation. Steve's LEDs use aluminum square tubing with fans blowing through them for heat sinks. You can order preassembled kits or get everything to put it together yourself. I originally used 60 degree optics, but removed them because of the different colored shadows or "disco effect".

LEDs have a high initial cost but you get the satisfaction of knowing that you are saving the planet.
 
I just switched out my lights to Current USA satellite system. I love them. I actually got the retrofit kit with is LEDs that have sticky tape that you can stick to your old fixture I'm a sheet metal mechanic so I just bent up nice aluminum deflectors and mounted them to that. It comes with wireless controller and you can modify your lighting. I am so picky with lighting and this system is great. Check it out on the web there is a video on their site to show you how you can really tweak the colors.
 
I have bought several LEDs and made my own. LEDs are usually much more of one color or another than fluorescent lights, if that is what you're used to. Be warned. What I mean by this is that most LEDs have a very narrow spectrum of light they emit. In order to bring out colors in your fish the way a nice fluorescent lamp does you will need to have a wide array of colors in the right proportions. I'm happy with my DIY LEDs (I have a thread on here somewhere) in which I used cool white, neutral white, warm white and royal blue. If I wasn't so lazy I would probably add some other colors as well to make the warmer colors "pop" more on my fish. Since upgrading to a larger tank with thicker glass the color is considerably more green/blue than it was on a tank with thinner glass. I think I will add orange/red/magenta eventually to my LEDs so that I can not use a fluorscent light + my LEDs to make things look nice.
 
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