# diy led advice needed



## reefkid96 (Feb 5, 2012)

I am thinking of retrofitting my old 48" t5 fixture with multichip led's and would like everybody's advice. This will be going over my 90 gallon (48" x 18" x 24") mixed reef tank. I plan on using 4 20w 9 bulb multichip 14k led's and 4 20w 9 bulb multichip actinic led's? thanks in advance, Andrew

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/EPISTAR-20W-...691?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item33703751bb

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/EPISTAR-20W-...540?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f11354d64


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## altcharacter (Jan 10, 2011)

So I had posted this LED in another thread and was wondering about the performance. It's almost the same as what you have here except it's 6 blue and 3 white.
http://dx.com/p/diy-10w-800lm-blue-light-3-x-3-aquarium-led-module-9-11v-152367?item=55

You could also get the xp-g Warm White LED from RapidLED for $5. It would give you 300 [email protected] which means for almost the same price you could get the same lumens with half the Amps and 16watts instead of the 22 that the LED you linked.

so if you were going to use 8 total LED's of the ones you linked it would be a total of [email protected] compared to the RapidLED setup of [email protected] which is a fairly big savings in electricity in my opinion at pretty much the same cost. Also with the RapidLED setup you could mix colors like blue, royal blue, red, and differnt colored whites.

The last thing you have to remember is heat. A 1Amp LED gives off an insane amount of heat so you could imagine how much heat a 5Amp LED gives off. Meaning you're going to spend more on cooling also and the noise level is going to go up quite a bit.

The ladies say bigger is better, but they might be wrong on this one...


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