LEDs replace Metal Halide lighting system

[dexteryuen]

Anyone has experienced to build a LED lighting system for RT? I'm planning to build one with >100 LEDs for my 60" RT, white and blue color, any recommendation for the LEDs and the circuit board arrangement?

LED is cheap, bright, with low heat emission and energy consumption, a range of selectable light spectrum is available, so why metal halide? Any drawback?

 

[TropicalNorth]

I've been looking into lighting my 20g with 5mm superbright LED's (I don't like using heaps of electricity) and I have found it takes hundreds and hundreds of LED's to equal a MH. The energy usage is a lot less and heat output is less but it still costs a lot of money initially (even DIY). It also depends what type of LED your talking about, there are some high powered ones out there, you wouldn't need as many but the cost would still be high.

If you go to the nano reef forums some people have used just LED's to light their 5g (and smaller) tanks with good results. At the moment I think MH's are more cost effective in the beginning.

The best way to wire them up is in series, that way there is no need for resistors.