# LED lights, opinions?



## mauve (Apr 12, 2010)

I just found out that they exist and are energy efficient.
Do you have any experience in lighting planted tank and opinion on those?


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## Fish_Man (Apr 9, 2010)

mauve said:


> I just found out that they exist and are energy efficient.
> Do you have any experience and opinion on those?


They are great and you can get one with bubbles.. its a LED bubble wand. Internal lighting.

Anyone have this that can give more info on this?


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## mauve (Apr 12, 2010)

They are pricy, ain't it?


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## tebore (Jan 3, 2010)

LEDs themselves are a great technology. 

Not sure if you mean LED lighting in the ornamental or main lighting sense.

As ornaments commercial applications are ok and entertaining to look at. 

Commercial main LED lighting are either junk or overpriced. Bright, cheap and reliable pick two. 

Many people choose to source their own components and make the fixtures themselves for the best bang for the buck. Good parts aren't cheap but pay off in the long run.

For instance I have a 3 gallon tank that was $20 with light and filter. The parts for the lighting in the lid is probably around $40(they were spare LEDs I had laying around). The LEDs probably use around 1-2watts of power but provide about double the light of an equivalent 1-2 CFL (if such a thing existed).

Since we're in the planted tank section, I'll assume LED grow lights. Commercially those are even more expensive because of the specific LEDs needed to promote growth. People custom build their setups with hand picked LEDs to promote the growth in their tanks.


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## Fish_Man (Apr 9, 2010)

mauve said:


> They are pricy, ain't it?


not sure what you're using the LED light for.. but the bubble wand is a bit pricey I guess

its about $20-30 depending on which store, but its dual purpose as an airstone too isn't bad.


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## tebore (Jan 3, 2010)

Fish_Man said:


> not sure what you're using the LED light for.. but the bubble wand is a bit pricey I guess
> 
> its about $20-30 depending on which store, but its dual purpose as an airstone too isn't bad.


The mark up on that thing is like 3-6x the parts to make it.


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## Fish_Man (Apr 9, 2010)

tebore said:


> The mark up on that thing is like 3-6x the parts to make it.


ya extra extra cost on labor


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## mauve (Apr 12, 2010)

I saw on Youtube lots of people growing pot under them lights so must be pretty good for plants


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## bae (May 11, 2007)

You can get screw-in LED bulbs now, but they are really expensive. I expect the price to plummet over the next few years as they become commodity items like CFLs did -- they were very expensive when they first came out. Economy of scale.


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## mauve (Apr 12, 2010)

bae said:


> You can get screw-in LED bulbs now, but they are really expensive. I expect the price to plummet over the next few years as they become commodity items like CFLs did -- they were very expensive when they first came out. Economy of scale.


I guess that won't happen until we put enough mercury that's in those CFL's into them landfills


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## bae (May 11, 2007)

mauve said:


> I guess that won't happen until we put enough mercury that's in those CFL's into them landfills


You aren't supposed to dispose of CFLs (or fluorescent tubes, for that matter) in your trash. You're supposed to take them in for recycling. A number of companies that sell CFLs will accept used ones. IIRC, Home Depot and Rona will. Or you can take them to an Environment Days site, or a household toxic waste site.

At any rate, this is the rule in Toronto.


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## mauve (Apr 12, 2010)

bae said:


> You aren't supposed to dispose of CFLs (or fluorescent tubes, for that matter) in your trash. You're supposed to take them in for recycling. A number of companies that sell CFLs will accept used ones. IIRC, Home Depot and Rona will. Or you can take them to an Environment Days site, or a household toxic waste site.
> 
> At any rate, this is the rule in Toronto.


Yep, that's what we are "supposed" to do, also we are "supposed" to recycle and so on. However, in every building I've lived in Toronto, a lot of good folks are just throwing everything into garbage (they are too busy watching "entertainments" on them big plasmas). No offense to plasma tv owners


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## arc (Mar 11, 2010)

If your budget is unlimited then there are some really high end stuff that's great for plants since they can fine tune the light needed.

Something like this 
http://www.bigalsonline.ca/StoreCat...18__24?&query=led&queryType=0&hits=12&offset=

will look good but will not produce enough lumens for plant growth. They are low watts but in this case you want more watts for plants, led's just are more efficient in producing watts/lumen. Have a look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy#Examples_2

depending on you're tank size, you can DIY a set up with high powered LEDs (Creed stars use about 1-2 watts or more each I think) and it would work. In the end you would be saving 20-30% power for the same lumens and never have to change the lights again but its a lot of work and a DIY will still cost a lot.


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## mauve (Apr 12, 2010)

arc said:


> If your budget is unlimited then there are some really high end stuff that's great for plants since they can fine tune the light needed.
> 
> Something like this
> http://www.bigalsonline.ca/StoreCat...18__24?&query=led&queryType=0&hits=12&offset=
> ...


DIY should be fun as long as you know what "ingredients" to get and how to put them together without frying something off. I'd do it. LED seems like the only way to go if you want to save on hydro and bulbzz.


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## mauve (Apr 12, 2010)

Found a good article
http://www.aquatic-eden.com/2009/09/led-planted-aquarium-lighting-part-1.html


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## bae (May 11, 2007)

mauve said:


> DIY should be fun as long as you know what "ingredients" to get and how to put them together without frying something off. I'd do it. LED seems like the only way to go if you want to save on hydro and bulbzz.


You'd have to cost it out carefully. No point in spending $1000 on a LED setup that lasts only 7 years (as in that article) to save a few hundred on bulbs and hydro, if that, over that period, if saving money is your goal. With prices dropping, it's worthwhile to redo the calculation periodically, but if you want cheap and efficient, not just efficient, you'll have to wait until you can buy screw-in LED bulbs as a commodity item at the hardware store or supermarket.

As for the claims about providing specific wavelengths for plant growth, well, it's not so simple. LEDs do come in a few single wavelength colors like red and blue, but the way the white ones work is just like fluorescents -- they emit UV which interacts with a phosphor coating to give a range of wavelengths that depends on the phosphor. Also, it's been repeatedly demonstrated that targeting the specific wavelengths that chlorophyll absorbs isn't all that effective. It's also not cost-effective. Plants have accessory pigments that enable them to absorb a wide range of visible wavelengths and pass the energy into the photosynthetic cycle. 'Cool white' phosphor, for example, is very cheap and looks white to our eyes, but it emits mostly in the green range which should be least effective for photosynthesis. Nonetheless, it outperforms some full spectrum lights like 'vitalite' for aquatic plant growth. Aquatic plants receive their sunlight filtered through water that isn't usually colorless, and have adaptations to deal with it.

LED is very interesting, but economic it's not. Yet.


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## shrtmann (Feb 15, 2009)

I really dont see how $120 is a really pricey unit seeing how MH or T5 units are around the same price range, if not more.
The only question i have is the effectiveness. 
I have seen them in action over a saltwater setup just at the LFS as he just got it in and was trying it out and a dude at work threw a Marineland set on a 20g lightly planted tank i think it had like 8 lights or so..so will update shortly as to how well they work.
On saltwater tanmk i seen them on the water really twinkled. Loved the effect it made but he didnt really have any fish in the tank just a bare bottom with a few frags.

I too really want to try them but as im getting the parts for a small marine tank and will either go with these or t5's. The pricing i dont see as being too outrageous tho


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## arc (Mar 11, 2010)

shrtmann said:


> I really dont see how $120 is a really pricey unit seeing how MH or T5 units are around the same price range, if not more.
> The only question i have is the effectiveness.
> I have seen them in action over a saltwater setup just at the LFS as he just got it in and was trying it out and a dude at work threw a Marineland set on a 20g lightly planted tank i think it had like 8 lights or so..so will update shortly as to how well they work.
> On saltwater tanmk i seen them on the water really twinkled. Loved the effect it made but he didnt really have any fish in the tank just a bare bottom with a few frags.
> ...


The $120 Marineland lights have a total of 6x1w leds for total of 450 lumens, I think this is listed in the description. One 13 watt cfl 6500k has about 800 lumens. Anyone with HM know the lumens? I'm afraid I never owned one before. Price wise they are about the same but the output of light/$ makes them expensive.

Another good read if anyone has the time

http://www.americanaquariumproducts.com/Aquarium_Lighting.html


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## igor.kanshyn (Jan 14, 2010)

I was looking to LED fixtures for some time. All fixtures on a market that are not extremely expensive don't give enough light for plants.

You can easy compare them to florescent light if you know how many watts that LED light use. Just double this amount and you will get florescent analogy. For instance, Wide 24 White LED Bar Aquarium Lighting Power used 2W. It'a similar to 4W of florescent light. This is definitely not enough for plants.

I have a DIY LED fixture now, I'm not completely happy with it, but it's OK.

Try to do something by yourself, its fun and parts are really cheap on eBay. Quality of that cheap parts is not good, so order some spare bulbs/diodes/stripes/lamps


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## AquaNekoMobile (Feb 26, 2010)

arc said:


> The $120 Marineland lights have a total of 6x1w leds for total of 450 lumens, I think this is listed in the description. One 13 watt cfl 6500k has about 800 lumens. Anyone with HM know the lumens? I'm afraid I never owned one before. Price wise they are about the same but the output of light/$ makes them expensive.
> 
> Another good read if anyone has the time
> 
> http://www.americanaquariumproducts.com/Aquarium_Lighting.html


That comes to 75lm per LED. The Cree Q5 is binned at 107lm-114lm minimum at 1W. Cree R2 in my estimation should be binned at a min 114lm.

Cree R2 $6.12
Cree Q5 $5.36 (I remember when it costed like IIRC $8/LED on this >_<
SSC P4 $4.11 (IIRC binned at 100lm @ 1W)

Not sure what Marineland uses but 75lm @ 1W leads me to think it's many generations back on the LEDs as most manufactuers can't turn around to the newest LED as they buy in bulk for thier manufactering.

It's not hard to resolder your own LED's. IIRC the bulbs arn't going to burn out in 7yrs. It'll just be less bright. IIRC something like 50-70% less bright then but still useable for other things. It was like 2 yrs ago when that high price was on the Cree Q5's and I remember the SSC P4's around $7ish a piece. Now it's $3 less a piece and not a bad price for repairs.

Probably cost you $2.50 a piece then for a Cree X-RE S5 for repairs and probably have a Cree X-RE V5 or something then pushing 200lm @ 1W on the market.

Probably cost for $15-20 for 6 LED's just to upgrade the lamp then. I don't think it's tht bad for a 7yr run and about 30mins of soldering.


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## characinfan (Dec 24, 2008)

Anything new since April?

Bump!


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