sweet! how much of a cut did you see in your electricity bill already?
just so tempted to give a DIY led light a go for my freshwater setups!
just so tempted to give a DIY led light a go for my freshwater setups!
Finally going LED
- Thread starter Ace25
- Start date
i imagine he uses something along the lines of half the energy he did before, based pureley on speculation. even a high light freshwater is like half the light so you will only save like half the savings
ace how is the tank looking? id imagine stuff would still be adjusting, it took coral i brought in close to a month to adjust and start growing
welp looks like you already answered that a couple days ago.. the tank looks great..keep us posted..what do you do for alk/ca by the way?
ace how is the tank looking? id imagine stuff would still be adjusting, it took coral i brought in close to a month to adjust and start growing
welp looks like you already answered that a couple days ago.. the tank looks great..keep us posted..what do you do for alk/ca by the way?
Well, I am still adjusting to the light.. I haven't quite got it dialed in 100% how I like it yet. One thing, it is WAY to strong of a light.. seriously overkill. My Duncans were getting blasted with light so I moved them to the sand and my SPS frags where my duncans used to be. Within 24 hours my Red Planet frag almost completely bleached out, so I moved it lower and also lowered the whites from 50% down to 40%, today my setosa is showing signs of bleaching so I lowered the whites down to 30% and Blues to 80%. What I have to do now is find all the "sweet spots" for each coral all over again so the next couple months I am sure there will be a lot of changes in the tank with rock and coral placement.
As for power, I will know at the end of the month, I purposely installed my LED lights right before my bill changed. The meter gets read on the 20th and I will know how much saving by the end of the month. The previous month electric bill was 131.58 when running T5s and MH.
As for power, I will know at the end of the month, I purposely installed my LED lights right before my bill changed. The meter gets read on the 20th and I will know how much saving by the end of the month. The previous month electric bill was 131.58 when running T5s and MH.
at 50% power you are still producing something like 70% of the light since leds output starts to sag at the higher drive currents, 30% power still produces almost 50% of the light, moreso for the xr-e/xp-e, but the xpg are better at higher currents.
Yup, your right about those levels. One thing I don't like about the meanwell drivers, they don't let you dim low enough. They start out at 15% power and on the XP-Gs even 15% is very bright. Hard to get a low light dusk/dawn setting with them.
Todays modification was to remove all the 45 degree optics on my XP-Gs and run them without optics. I am still not completely happy so tomorrow I am going to remove the 65 degree optics from the rest of the XP-Gs and the 60 degree optics from my NWs and run all my whites without optics and see how I feel about that. My problem is I have a very intense bright spot right in the center of the tank and I want to spread that out. I am not using any optics on my 29G light and I am very happy with the looks of that one.
Todays modification was to remove all the 45 degree optics on my XP-Gs and run them without optics. I am still not completely happy so tomorrow I am going to remove the 65 degree optics from the rest of the XP-Gs and the 60 degree optics from my NWs and run all my whites without optics and see how I feel about that. My problem is I have a very intense bright spot right in the center of the tank and I want to spread that out. I am not using any optics on my 29G light and I am very happy with the looks of that one.
Removing the optics from all the whites did the trick. I did lose some PAR but it is still comparable to a 400w MH. I think it looks much better in the tank now, no more bright spot in the center and it blends well with the blues. It also covers the edges of the tank much better.
Update: LEDs are HARD to get "right" it seems. I am still constantly playing with mine and still not having much luck. They are too powerful and killing some of my SPS corals. I took off all the optics and I like the looks of the LED light but in order to get the brightness that my eyes like I end up throwing way too much light on the corals. When I lower the light to the right PAR levels it looks really dim to my eyes. They are very deceiving.
Right now I am still leaning towards a MH light being my favorite type of light for the looks (variety of bulbs that all work well and meet our personal preferences) and ease of use, although the electricity cost and heat issues are huge negatives. They do seem to put out just the right amount of light and right intensity for our needs with so many years of research behind them.
I think the LEDs of today will work, but at present they do require quite a bit of tweaking to get them working right. So for now I am going to say LEDs are NOT for everyone.. they are good for certain types of people, people that like to play with things like LEDs (me). I know the majority of people out there just like to stick a light over the tank they know works well and call it a day and for those type of people I would say to wait a couple more years for LEDs to mature more so the spectrum and intensity will best suit the purposes of a reef tank.
I don't feel there are any LED fixtures on the market right now that I would say is the perfect LED light, most fixtures do not cover the entire spectrum leaving holes in UV, greens, and red part of the spectrum. In the last few months they have made LEDs to fill those gaps, specifically UV and Actinic spectrum (380-420nm). So it is possible to make an LED fixture that covers the entire spectrum, but for a fixture to come out that does it will take some time because the mfg will have to test different setups to get it looking good. For example, you want some reds in the spectrum, but a little goes a long way, so figuring out the number of red leds, placement, and intensity will take some time to research. Specialized controllers will be needed to give the correct voltage for each color LED to make them blend well. UV LEDs are still a huge question right now as well.. there are 2 sides to that argument and I have no idea what the answer is to the question "Is a little UV beneficial for reef tanks, and if so, how much?". Without knowing the answer to that question Mfg will not be putting those LEDs in their fixtures because the power and space could be used for lighting we see with our eyes, which will make the fixture look better.
Right now I am still leaning towards a MH light being my favorite type of light for the looks (variety of bulbs that all work well and meet our personal preferences) and ease of use, although the electricity cost and heat issues are huge negatives. They do seem to put out just the right amount of light and right intensity for our needs with so many years of research behind them.
I think the LEDs of today will work, but at present they do require quite a bit of tweaking to get them working right. So for now I am going to say LEDs are NOT for everyone.. they are good for certain types of people, people that like to play with things like LEDs (me). I know the majority of people out there just like to stick a light over the tank they know works well and call it a day and for those type of people I would say to wait a couple more years for LEDs to mature more so the spectrum and intensity will best suit the purposes of a reef tank.
I don't feel there are any LED fixtures on the market right now that I would say is the perfect LED light, most fixtures do not cover the entire spectrum leaving holes in UV, greens, and red part of the spectrum. In the last few months they have made LEDs to fill those gaps, specifically UV and Actinic spectrum (380-420nm). So it is possible to make an LED fixture that covers the entire spectrum, but for a fixture to come out that does it will take some time because the mfg will have to test different setups to get it looking good. For example, you want some reds in the spectrum, but a little goes a long way, so figuring out the number of red leds, placement, and intensity will take some time to research. Specialized controllers will be needed to give the correct voltage for each color LED to make them blend well. UV LEDs are still a huge question right now as well.. there are 2 sides to that argument and I have no idea what the answer is to the question "Is a little UV beneficial for reef tanks, and if so, how much?". Without knowing the answer to that question Mfg will not be putting those LEDs in their fixtures because the power and space could be used for lighting we see with our eyes, which will make the fixture look better.
What if you put the optics back on and hang the fixture higher above the tank? Would it reduce the par and blend the colors better? I know you want to have it in the hood, but some of us don't have the hood.
I don't mind the light bleeding into the room.
I don't mind the light bleeding into the room.
That makes good sense as far as visible intensity goes, since the curves show spikes in photosynthetic peaks. I'm still waiting on LEDs to "look" better. I still don't like the kind of light they produce, aesthetically speaking. Right now, I actually like the looks of plasma arc lighting better than any other options, but that isn't terribly practical at the moment, obviously. I'm sure LEDs will probably produce the closest approximation to sunlight, even at depth, eventually, but until then I'll steer away. I admittedly did, however, entertain the thought of investing in LEDs, but decided the above in light of everything else.
Do you think you will try to work it out with the LEDs or will you switch back to MH? If you do stick to LEDs, will you pursue the idea of controlling the LEDs according to weather and other great ideas you had?
You said that the light was dim looking with the right amount of PAR. Is it because the light peaked at the spectrum we don't see well?
You said that the light was dim looking with the right amount of PAR. Is it because the light peaked at the spectrum we don't see well?
