lighting choices

mainereefer · Nov 2, 2011

I am setting up a 180g and so many choices!
im trying to determine what lighting I should go with

this tank im planning on being the last one I set up for a fewww years. so I am trying to go as low maintenance and affordable as I can

so for lighting florescent lights are old news (pc/t-5).
mh are still up there but led's are getting cheaper

then along came plasma lights ppl are using them for growing plants, saying that 300w of plasma light is equal to 1000w of mh.

if this is the case plasma kights have the colors of mh but the efficiency and life of led

my question is because of the depth of my tank should I stick with my mh lighting, try to get the par out of led's at 24" threw water or bite the bullet and pay the $800 for a 100w plasma light?

Hahnmeister · Nov 3, 2011

I think LED will have more bang for the buck than plasma. If you DIY a LED fixture at least, you can make a fixture with the light output of a halide for 1/2 the wattage and about the same starting cost.

mainereefer · Nov 3, 2011

the problem I am seeing with led is par threw 20"+ of water and the fact I hate the color of any tank I have seen with led lights

CJO · Nov 3, 2011

LEDs will be less expensive over the long run and PAR at the bottom should not be an issue. Plasma looks like it will be nice, but, personally, I'd wait a few years. Will the $800 fixture cover your whole tank?

As far as colors go, you can customize the colors you see with LEDs. I'm wondering what the tanks you've seen have been using?

CJ

TooTime · Nov 3, 2011

I have led on a 25" deep tank and I have no problem growing acans on the bottom as well as plates, mushrooms, zoo's, chalice, and tons of coralline algae. I have had several people look at my tank and no one believes how fast my sps grows and everyone had loved the colors. I would not switch to anything else right now personally. I wish you good luck on your build.

Hahnmeister · Nov 4, 2011

Those who use nothing but cool white and blue led's are missing many spectra, sort of like some early T5 tanks where the same was done and corals ended up looking washed out and pastel/chalk-like. As with T5's, "color husbandry" is important with LED's as well. Royal Blues for starters, as well as some medium or even warm white LED's are a good idea. I have added red as well as the much-needed 420nm "true actinic" to make sure as many spectra are available for me to tailor the color and intensity as needed. The raw output per watt of LED's trumps all else, so as long as you have a decent amount of them and with some narrow beam optics, they will penetrate deeper in a tank than any other light you can get. The challenge is just a matter of mixing and matching the right ones to get a good color mix.

mainereefer · Nov 4, 2011

ok then for a diy led build what led's should I use? and how many 1w led's to cover a 6' x 2' tank and cut threw 2' of water

CJO · Nov 4, 2011

Personally, I wouldn't use "1 watt" LEDs. They are very inefficient. I think that the standard is still the Cree XM-L, XP-G and XP-E LEDs.

One of our sponsors, Reef LED Lights, has a good writeup for determining how many LEDs you need:
LED My TANK! ReefLEDLights | LED Aquarium Lighting ReefLEDLights | LED Aquarium Lighting

CJ

mainereefer · Nov 4, 2011

everything I have read says 3- 1w leds is more energy efficient, they will last longer and have more par than using a single 3 watt or 5 watt

kattz · Nov 6, 2011

mainereefer said:
everything I have read says 3- 1w leds is more energy efficient, they will last longer and have more par than using a single 3 watt or 5 watt

I'm using Cree XR-E 3w LED's mixed cyan/royal blue/cool white/red/green, and my coral growth is excellent. My LED's are 19" above the water, uses 70 and 80 deg optics, and I can pull 450 PAR on the bottom of the tank without any effort. My Amex ramps colors up and down throughout the day, and I think they are the way to go. All of my LED's are through LED Reef Lights, and the suport from Bill is superb. The 1w LED's are OK, but you WILL require a lot more of them unless you're building a frag tank... Think watt density here.

CJO · Nov 7, 2011

mainereefer said:
everything I have read says 3- 1w leds is more energy efficient, they will last longer and have more par than using a single 3 watt or 5 watt

That's simply not true. The Cree XM-L are currently the most efficient mass-produced LED available.

CJ

mainereefer · Nov 7, 2011

where did you get your info?

I find articls like this all day long,, I havent seen them go the other way.

"The wattage of a LED is determined by the amperage they are driven at, with 1W LEDs driven at 350mA, and 3W LEDs driven at 700mA. Despite the fact that 3W LEDs are driven at double the amperage of a 1W, and normally consume only 2W of actual power, LED manufacturers have labeled them a 3W. Itâ€™s easy to ask yourself â€œthen why did LED manufacturers name these LEDs 3W instead of 2W?â€ Perhaps it is simply a marketing trick, or just a label meant to confuse us. Whatever the reason it is important to note that anything labeled a 3W LED, is by all intents and purposes a 2W LED. Because manufacturers have used confusing labeling on their 3W LEDs, anyone reading the data on them is lead to believe they are horribly inefficient compared to their 1W counterparts. The truth however, is that 3W LEDs are only marginally less efficient than 1W LEDs when you compare the actual power consumed to lumen output. Hydro Grow has done extensive testing on 3W LEDs to implement their use in our Penetrator PRO Series LED Grow Lights. Our 3W LEDs are driven at 550mA, or about 1.53W per LED. The reason we do not operate our LEDs at 700mA as they are rated, is that it reduces the efficiency, increases heat, and reduces lifespan. At 550mA our 3W LEDs test 5% more efficient in terms of lumens per watt than at 700mA, run up to 15 degrees cooler, and last tens of thousands of hours longer.
Be careful however, of companies using 3W LEDs to trick you with their marketing. For example our 345W PRO uses 345 x 3W LEDs, consuming about 540W of power. A competitor's 540W LED Grow Light however, will likely consist of only 180 x 3W LEDs, meaning you get about half the output with their product as you do our own. These companies are using less LEDs, rather than simply replacing their 1Wâ€™s with 3Wâ€™s to increase performance. Beware of this shortcut taken by many companies, as youâ€™re going to pay a lot more to get a lot less."

hydrogrowled.com

one of the better articles
1w VS 3w VS 3w-3chip in LED Growing Lights | LED Grow Lights Review

"Common sense would dictate that a 3W LED would emit more intense and brighter light than a 1W. This is correct, however, this is not the whole story as some manufacturers claim. A single 3W LED will outshine a single 1W LED but it does not do so on a 3 to 1 basis. To be more clear: a 3W LED is not 3x as bright, powerful, or intense as a 1W LED. Expanding upon this, we can reach the conclusion that 3x1W LEDs will be brighter, more powerful, and more intense than a single 3W LED and the reason comes down to efficiency."

kattz · Nov 7, 2011

OK, let me speak with hard data. In testing on a local tank and using an Apogee PAR meter, I found that a 1w professionally-manufactured (manufacturers name withheld so I don't get sued) array of 60 LED's mixed royal blue/cyan/white 33/33/33% mix put out 137 PAR on the bottom of an 18" deep tank with the LED's suspended 12" above the water. A 50/50 royal blue/cool white mix of 35 Cree XR-E's tuned to 750mW forward current in the same conditions put out 341 PAR AT IDENTICAL CONDITIONS.

The same array over my 90g puts out an average of 200-250 par on the sandbed with the LED's 16" above the water's surface. You can see my PAR readings for my DIY build on Reef Central - my userid is kahuna.

So, about 2.5X as bright, but also detuned to 750mA.

Kev

CJO · Nov 8, 2011

I got my info from over a year of research, several LED builds, white papers from various manufacturers, experimentation and simple science.

Your article is both outdated and inaccurate. "1 watt" and "3 watt" LEDs are both misnomers. That's why I put the "1 watt" in quotes when I was responding to you before. Watts are determined by the forward voltage of the LED times the amperage at which you drive them. They state that the "3 watt" LEDs are driven at 700mA, while this is commonly done to the LEDs rated to run 50,000 hours at 1A (such as the XR-E) to increase the lifespan of the LED, the newer ones are rated at mich higher amperages. The XM-L LEDs are rated to run at up to 3 amps, though I wouldn't do that myself without some very good cooling.

Efficiency is commonly derived by dividing the lumen output by the watts required to get that number. The Cree XM-Ls currently have the highest efficiency at 100 lumens per watt and can be driven at up to 10 watts per LED (though efficiency does drop somewhat at that high an output).

Hope this helps,
CJ