My fixture has 20- 3w lights, a combo of half blue and half white. They run full power all the time, unless I want a more blue look at times. I have acro,s less than a foot from them, near the top of my 20g tank

Two units on a 48" tank. No one unit would have never been enough to cover the 48 inches, even with increased intensity. It created uneven lighting, middle 24"-30" was fine but the ends were too shaded.

Makes sense.

Have you considered a vertex or sunbrite?

Not really. I don't want a large fixture, and we all know tanks get upgraded all the time, so I want to be able to expand on lighting if needed. I also insist that all my devices are controllable via my Apex.

ok so why don't you start with two units for your tank. lift them up and see how much area they cover and if you are happy with the intensity and then see how many you realy need.

I think if you want the light out put the same as your 400's you will not be able to lift them to high but unless you have a PAR meter to test them with you'll never know.. and asking on here is just padding your posts :mrgreen:

get on with it and buy a couple already

Steve

Marko had a thread awhile back showing his 3 Sol's over his 180g and it looked good. I have a 36"x24" tank and have 2 Sol's over it as a single unit of either the Sol's or Radions wouldn't cover the area to my liking. I wanted lots of intensity over the entire square footage of the tank with no dim areas on the edges. My height is 12" above the water line and going through a glass top and run at 60%W, 70%RB & 70%B. It took me about 3 months to build up to this level (I used the amount of algae it produced on the glass to know when to increase the level) and haven't seen any need to go any higher. Corals all seem happy and the tank is very bright and pleasing to my eyes.

Ya, I used that as a guide, although he doesn't really have much for coral at this time to see how SPS react.
Dez also uses 3 and has great results, although he did add supplemental strips to fill in the shadows.

don't think 2 will be enough, I'm ok buying three (closer to June). I'll run them and see what happens. If my tank dies, I'll blame you :)

I think 4 units would eliminate shadows but would personally try 3 and then see if the extra cost is needed or not. My tank is only 20" deep so I can't say if raising the lights a couple inches higher and cranking up the intensity to 100% (over time) would give you the effect you are looking for or not. While I'm sure it'll grow coral just fine, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Ya, for my tank I'll try three, see how it looks. The MH setup is all contained in the canopy, so I can simply put it back while saving for a fourth unit, then try again :)

Your gonna need 4. Biggest mistake I see is people not getting enough of them. Once your corals are used to them, which in my case has taken since Sept you can crank them up to 100%. You just have to be patient as you run in to problems with bleaching and brownout. Since ive started to get closer to the 100% mark i've seen better growth and color. I've copied a lighting schedule off of a member on that other site and it's turned out great.

which ones are you looking at?

Great thread Brad, really helpful. So many people are where u are, thinking about it, questioning it, wanting them LED's I'll keep following. :0)

Your the first person i've heard running LED's at 100%. A year of getting ur Corals used to it. Wow, but hey ya can't rush it. Feel like sharing ur lighting schedule?? And do u lightning storm ever? And, what led's r u using....cool white, royal blue, blue, uv, red, green? And its the Aqua Illumination Sol? Thanks.

The AI SOL blues...

A couple are, I think Rich said he was on his setup.

Oh yeah, I wonder how long it took him to get them to 100%. Do u recall?

No, but he did mention that the frags he got from me were under full lighting within a couple of days, so that tells me that my corals could take full lighting after the same amount of time.

Hey Brad, I am sure on deeper tanks like yours and Rich's running the AI at 100% isn't going to be a problem but to be safe start them off low like 60% and watch how the corals react over a 2 week period, mostlikely they can handle more but I bleached montis and some Lps when I had mine turned up to 70% on a 18" high tank. Most of my sps are higher up in my tank aswell...

Depending on the mounting height of the AI your sps could definitely take the light although led is abit different than metal halides as most users will tell you....

When are you ordering the lights up?

My Radiums expire end of June, so probably in that time frame

I was just looking at the output models for them, at 24" they will put out a 30x30 area with 160 to 239 PAR running at 100%they are more suted to a 24x24 area which would still be a tiny bit less than your 400's (mind you I haven't seen the new tank.) at a distance of 30" they only put out a 24" area at the 160 to 239 PAR.

so lifting these lights to get away with less wont work. they do look like a nice light though...

Steve

Well, I have 3 24x24 areas in the tank, so 3 lights should work. I also have4-6 inches between the glass and the rockwork all the way around the tank, so I'm going to try three and go from there.

yes You are right I am posting everywhere I can to find out the answer I am looking for. It is sometimes hard to motivate people to share knowledge and experience to answer in my own separate thread, so this time I have decided to highjack this thread :redface: (sorry Aquattro) and finally got better answer then just "you get what you pay for"
And the answer was: I need to know what kind of LED is used (actual coating etc), proven record of the fixtures and angle of the optics so I did learn something and thanks to the person who answerd that (StirCrazy). I will continue my own research obviously

And you're still doing it? Time to clean up my thread, me thinks :)

you going to use soap?

Steve

Are you back??

The other reason for not 100%
 

Just getting to the original question -- and I'm amazed no one has mentioned or seem to have considered in a build, but the efficiency curve of all LED's in not a straight line. The lumens per watt is ususally calculated at a low power level (300-700mA) and it drops as you run the blubs closer to 100%.

SO when I built my 112 LED fixture, I took this into account. At the upper end (80% and up) you add 20% more electric use and you really get about 12% more light. So, adding 10% more bulbs gives the same light at a lower power bill. I know it's not a whole lot, but over the life span of the LED it does add up.

IE: Cree XPG whites:
700mA = 228 lm = 325 lm/A
1000mA = 305 lm = 305 lm/A
1500mA = 406 = 270 lm/A
So on 100 bulbs running at 100% you get 487 Watts and 40,600 lm of light.

for 130 bulbs at 1000mA (66%) you get 422 Watts and 39,699 lm of light

So, you get almost the same light at 14% less power usage (65 watts less). And if you are running the light 12 hours a day you get about $27 less a year in power costs, for the extra 30 bulbs.

considering I got the LED's pretty cheap, it pays for itself in about 5 years without factoring in the extra heat that come off at 100% and the extra A/C needed to deal with that extra heat as well.

If you consider that you can go with a smaller heat sink even tough you have more bulbs due to less power going into heat, you can almost save enough on the sinks to pay for the extra LED's anyways

So, over the expected 10 year life span, you get longer bulb life (due to lower temp), cost savings on power, better control of colour, and the wonderful ability to just turn the fixture birghter if you wanted to without having to rebuild. It's pretty much hands down better to go with more bulbs

BTW. for the number crunching I did, I found that 112 bulbs at 75% worked out to be the best cost point for what I was building.....

thats cuz it really doesn't mater unless you going from a LED to another LED. if your coming from T5's MH ect.. your going to save money on power, unless you grossly overbuild. so unless you like worrying about eff and running as close as you can to it, then who cares. its the intensity and customization which are going to entice some one to go from MH to LED not the eff of the LED.

if you keep it cool its going to last just as long burning 1500ma as it would burning 1000ma, so use the extra light.. its only pennies a month more.

Steve

Hey Brad,

I run my AI's full blast for 5 hours a day with ramp up 3 hours prior and 3 hours post. My lights are hung indside the canopy about 8 inches awl. IMHO you wouldn't have any issues running AIs' at full intensity during the same photo period as your halides. Those 400W must be putting out close to a 1000 PAR just under the water line. I can tell you that's about the same or just under the AI's Par output regardless of the spectrum, any healthy SPS colony(in your case the entire tank) will tolerate the slight change in light intensity and flourish with the exception of montiporas.

When I started using AIs on the 210 last November I was in the same predicament as most of us would since xmas is right around the corner and I have exhausted all my fish funds long ago for the year. However I did come up with enough money for 3 of the AI's after explaining the benefits for them to the better half. :mrgreen: After reading a few different stories about LED's intensity taking out prized corals I decided to hang'em 18 inches awl at 50%. In the first couple of days, I was not happy with the color of the tank, it was just way to dim for me. So in the weeks that followed I bumped it up to 100%. I did noticed some of the SPS which are directly under the led started to color up, some of them has been in the tank for months without any colors. At this point I was really impressed with these lights although it has only been a short period of time I know I have made a good choice. One thing still really bugged me was the dimness over the entire tank. Even with them at 100% I still wished that they were brighter.

By the end of 2011 when I upgraded to the 300. I told my wife the same thing I told her when I upgraded to the 210, "this will be the last tank":redface: I knew I wanted the AIs but just didn't know how many. I contacted C2 for info and I was told 12 units for the size of my tank and on the forum I was told 6 units would be plenty, I opted for 9 unit as it is some where in the middle. Now after running them for 4 month, all the sps are keeping there colors nicely and growth rate are awesome. All the frags I got from Brad at the swap are under the led within a few days after arriving without any problems and the more importantly they are keeping there original color as they were in Brad's tank. Honestly I don't think I can keep the same coloration if my light are ran at half intensity. lately I am been contemplating on getting 3 more so I can get full coverage and even if I wanted to keep an efflo on the sandbed I wouldn't have to worry about the lighting. I blame this on Brad since it was his amazing efflo got me thinking about this.

Brad, you have a very nice SPS tank with beautiful coloration, I would think any one with such a nice tank would have a sense of trepidation changing a major component on the tank. I know 3 of them would suffice but as far as the intensity goes, if you want to keep the colors that you have I would keep them at about 8 inches awl and run them at 100% for the same duration as your Metal halide and I will pre-warn you that they will seem a bit dimmer than you halides even at full blast.

Couple of days but started off 18 inches awl then lowered to 8 inches month later.

Thanks Rich, sounds like a plan. I'll start with three and hope I keep the colors, and as budget allows, I can add units if needed. But for now, I'm stuck at 3. Property taxes coming up, and I have to budget for Costa Rica next winter :)

I have a 6 ft tank with mixed sps and some LPS. I am running only 2 ai Sol, I run the lights from 8am to 12am slowly ramping up.

At 5 pm my lights run at 55%white 75 both blues till 8pm any brighter and things get upset, i don't have a deep tank and have the lights about 10inch above water.

Everything is growing amazing in my opinion.

I know how it feels Brad, just paid for $800 sewage and property tax is just around the corner. Some times I feel like I can even print it fast enough. Below is a picture of my tank's par reading with AI's on full blast, I used an apogee par meter. If you get a chance to get some par reading off your tank, maybe you can use it as a reference.

http://i1088.photobucket.com/albums/...s/1d2023c4.jpg

Just in case here is a link to melevsreef, he has radium 250 and 400 mh par reading there.

Rich, is this with the three, or after the addition of the others?

No, Thats with all 9. If you look at the picture, there are 2 dark strips which are the 2 braces on the tank. As you can see the par reading drops off dramaticlly as soon as you get on the outter circle of the light and thats why I am gonna get 3 more.

thx

My buddy Peter, apexfd who took my old tank(210) which is similar to yours but taller had 3 AI's running for a while, now he has put on an extra one because it was too dim for him. I will ask him to give you some feedbacks since your tanks are so close in demension.

Does he have any significant SPS in the tank that would compare to mine? To compare color retention?

He has lots of sps coral but not too many large colonies like yours. I am heading over there tonight, I can snap some pictures for you and post it lif you like. I just got a new camera (Thanks to Wayne's input)and its my first DSLR so don't expect any thing fancy.:redface: