wtk about led spot lights

i'm thinking you might want to do 2 on your nano if you have any SPS

 

LEd lighting will be our topic at our first meeting. Gered would be a great person to talk to.

 

The club should see about talking to this company http://www.aquaillumination.com/ it's from what I understand a guy making LED fixtures here in ames. they are pretty expensive though. Maybe he could give a presentation or something.

 

I've been looking at them for a 45 hexagon I have. based on the thread from reefcentral where the builder posted the par specs, at the right height the best spread you can expect at the sand is a about a 20" diameter circle. So you can get by with one for a smaller cube, hex, cylinder, ect, but if you have a rectangle tank longer than 20" you probably want more than 1

 

i like these leds check them out 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD5y...re=related
also look at this
http://www.reefaddicts.com/content....dent-build

 

The one who designed and built them is a regular on nano-reef.com. He told me that you should really only count on them for about a 12"X12" area for good coverage and up to 14"X14" if you really hang them up high. I am pretty sure this is with the standard 40 degree optics. You'll lose lighting punch if you drop to 60 degree optics but it will give you a little bit better coverage. On a tank as high as a 45 Hex you'll probably need the 40 degree optics. I think that you'd probably need three of them for good spread. Evil himself has a 40 breeder that is lit by these lights and he uses five over them. Granted that is a lot more length and width than what you are looking at but I figure I would give you the heads up. Other projects on there that use them include an ELOS mini that runs two of them, and several picos/ foot wide cubes that run a single one.

 

I'm not an expert on LEDs, but from what I've read on LEDs is that its not the par that they lack, as much as its the limited color spectrum. I maybe wrong on this but I think thats what I remember reading.

 

i thought with LED's you can get whatever spectrum you want by mixing a few red, green, and blue's in there and having a controller on them...i think i read about that somewhere. you can use a LED sign controller on multiple colored LED's to dial in the color you want. or something like that

 

I'm on my way to KC right now, but when I get back in town I'll try and get pictures of my LED fixture over my nano. Gered has spot lights and I have a dimmable LED fixture that works great.

 

Really, the only LEDs you need for the fixture are Cool White LEDs and Royal Blues.  By having them on separate power supplies and dim-able drivers you can change how the color intensity exactly the way you want it.  Dimming the blues gives you a lower "K" look up to about a 10K look with only the Cool Whites blasting and dimming the Whites down will give you what is supposedly the best actinic light show there is available.  If you really want to include other LEDs into the fixture (which really isn't necessary), the standard blues work pretty well, but don't have the pop in terms of color or intensity as the Royal Blues.  If you want to bring out more of the reds and purples in your tank a few neutral white or warm white LEDs will do the trick, but using too many of them tends to overpower the rest of the fixture.  Leave the red and green LEDs on the shelf for marine applications.  They have a tendency to overpower every other color and make the fixture not look good.  So called UV LEDs are available, but they either fire at the 410 nm range which is more light purple than anything else OR cost you a ridiculous amount of money (we're talking $100 bucks a pop for a 3W LED).  But as these are LED spotlights we are talking about mostly, take your pick of all 12K or all 20K spotlights. 

 

Not sure how I missed this thread. I dont have a lot of time but I will put a few word in. The great thing with LED's is you can get any spectrum you want and still get the same Par value. When I picked up my Par38's that was my main question is what K value should I get and the response it all depends on if you like the blue or the crisp white look. So I went with the 20K look which consists of 3 royals and 2 whites. I know they were talks about putting in a single red LED so bring out some other colors. I know there is an option for it but not sure what the actual verdict is on them. I just noticed that they did get some more power to the Par38's and they are now 21w instead of the original 15w. I remember reading this somewhere and they mentioned the Par numbers are even better now.

 

Sorry for no pictures of Leds over my nano. Theres a couple things that I would like to add, and maybe help your desicion on the LEDs. First off LEDs are great for quite a few things. First off there or so many color spectrums you can get with difference in LED choices, plus with dimmable drivers, which are nice. Second the Par rating being high for these bulbs is awesome too. I don't know if your set on spot lights, but a couple questions to ask is. What size of nano cube, I have a 12g with a LED fixture that looks really good,and matchs my nano cube. Also the new PAR38 bulb have a choice of optics, which you will need atleast 2 of them. I would talk to Nick Driver at Nanotuners.com, he is very knowledgable about the LEDs. But you will love LEDs when you get them. Also if you would like to see some detialed pictures on my fixture I would be more than happy to send you some pictures.