LED lights?

[RussGB]

So I have been monkeying around with blue LED's for moonlight, but then I saw these on eBay...

LED's on Ebay

Was wondering maybe about using banks of these over my semi planted tanks....

Anyone know if this would work?

I mean the wattage is low, of course! LED's generat almost no heat. Why can't people use lumens or lux's so we know how much light comes out!!!!

[RussGB]

Re: LED lights?

I see it says to use one bank per 6 sq ft of growing area. So on my 6' x 2' I could fit say 5 of these under my canopy......

[eklikewhoa]

Re: LED lights?

There are some people on reef forums using the solaris LED lighting but it seems to be an iffy thing.

I know that LEDs grow algae really well  

[Mzungu]

Re: LED lights?

Well, you can look at the wattage per LED...usually the higher end LEDs are over 1 watt per LED, which, of course, creates some heat. But usually when people use LED systems for their tanks it's with arrays of LEDs over 1W.

I've been thinking about trying something like this, but everything's pretty out of my league money-wise. (Like the Solaris LED systems) And also, it would be cheapest to wire something up myself, and I just have NO idea how to do any of that!  :)

But from what I've seen,  people are measuring the light intensity by the wattage per LED.

[Mzungu]

Re: LED lights?

For aquarium purposes, though, you'd probably want to get a panel or two of white LEDs, to actually be able to see your fish and plants.

[Cesar]

Re: LED lights?

http://www.kaotica.com/frag/diy/moonlight/

Try this.

[RussGB]

Re: LED lights?

I already built myself moonlights. What I am really looking to do is use them as daytime lights. My one watt blue LEDs run all night. They don't really get get hot at all. I think one of the things that attracts me to LED's is their efficiency. Most of the energy consumed turns to light. That for me is the real issue. Wattage is the energy consumed and is not a measure of light output.

I have seen the Solaris units and they are really expensive. That's why I was interested in the units linked to above because the price was so good. If these are 1 watt, and there are 225 in each bank, and I install 5 banks, and theay are 90% efficient, thats a lot of light.....

[Mzungu]

Re: LED lights?

It does say in the link that this unit only uses 16W of electricity.

[RussGB]

Re: LED lights?

Yeah, its not a lot of watts. But with 5 banks, thats 80w. If thats mostly light, then they could be bright....