Progress of LED hood/retrofit

[SolRo]

How would you arange them if fitting on a 48" tank?

Depends on how my tests go, if corals are happy with a spread then I'd do a spread, if corals need more light then i could condense or double up the lights.

Would probably need to double up just because of the depth that would be in a 48" tank. My cooling method is working pretty well, even without having an enclosure yet, I'd think there could be 3 or 4 times the LEDs per inch without any overheating problems.

[swissfish]

Wow that's awesome. Looks like you got it.
What did that light end up costing you? and how long is the life expectancy of it?

[SolRo]

Wow that's awesome. Looks like you got it.
What did that light end up costing you? and how long is the life expectancy of it?

Life expectancy is advertized by the company as 100,000 hours at 25 C operating temp...another website put it more usefuly as that it if run 12 hours a day, every day, will be down to 70% output after 11 years.

Right now I'm reading 25 C at the coolest part of the fixture and 29 C at the hottest, which is again, without a hood to boost cooling even more.

To sum it up, I might get bored with reef keeping long before this thing needs replacement


Costs to get to this point? Lets just say it would have been cheaper to buy and HQI fixture.

But now that i have the equipment and know how to do things right, I could make these things and price would be competitive with HQI fixtures.

[SolRo]

test setup

[SolRo]

3 day update on test SPS frags (pics the day i got them), no color loss that I could notice.

Again, camera hates the light and angles give different colors as you can see with these 2 pics taken one after the other, that and I had just mounted them on frag pegs so they stay still in the current.







tried to square the shot with the egg crate as best as possible for later growth comparisons

[SolRo]

summary;

-Lights work now, made them into a self contained hood
-Run so cool I dont need a chiller, but do need a heater now.
-uses 1/3 the power of MH to theoreticaly give same PAR output.
-I can make em to be competitive with MH price wise if anyone's interested.

ohh and,
-too much light for shrooms anywhere in the tank.
-some zoas too
-hammer and GSP loving the light, lots of new growth.

[supaboy1981]

Thats amazingly awesome. How long will they last?? if they last as long as rumored they could be potentially alot less then MH since you dont have to replace MH bulbs, assuming that the price of the initial setup is the same as MH

[SolRo]

Life expectancy is advertized by the company as 100,000 hours at 25 C operating temp...another website put it more usefuly as that it if run 12 hours a day, every day, will be down to 70% output after 11 years.

Right now I'm reading 25 C at the coolest part of the fixture and 29 C at the hottest, which is again, without a hood to boost cooling even more.

To sum it up, I might get bored with reef keeping long before this thing needs replacement

.

[supaboy1981]

OK I am sold how much for a retrofit for a standard 20 enough light to keep clams?

[mmoore0803]

okay....how much for a 72" version? seriously I could put this over the 180g

[SolRo]

supaboy: sent pm

mmoore: I'm going to build smaller fixtures for now, maybe topping out at 48". But if you want, i could build you a high power fixture to light part of your tank.

I'd recommend that both of you wait another week to check out how the test goes before making any final decisions.

[mmoore0803]

ok....once u realize it works.....how about a 24" version x3

[SolRo]

Update:

shrooms adapted to strong light...finaly. (flash)




test frags still going strong, the brown branch frag is a piece i got for free at OG. Also, the brown cap with purple rim in the backround has realy lightened up. It was on its side or upside down in Dannys tank, so maybe it's getting color back?




"mystery" frag I bought from OG, wasn't digging the light on top of the rack so it's on the bottom till it gets used to it.





Look at what a mess my tank is with this test setup. You guys convinced yet that LEDs will keep coral alive and in good coloration? I wanna get my tank back into shape again