|
Reef Brite LED's available in Canada
|
Anybody in BC seen these??
|
I haven't seen them but Oceanic has them on their website.
|
Oceanic Corals www.oceaniccorals.com does have some in stock for you to check out for yourself and so does Oakville Reef Gallery www.oakvillereefgallery.com if you are in the GTA.
|
are these strong enough to be the main lighting?
|
I really can't see LED being strong enough for any thing.
|
Quote:
As for the Reefbrite ones, the answer is maybe. Hopefully I can test some soon. |
I just added the 15" light to my Refugum and I am very impressed it is defiantly brighter than my old Current USA 2 x 18" T5HO.
I am planning on adding 3 15" fixtures over my 15G (15x18x12) Frag tank to replace the 250W MH lamp I have over it. |
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Well if "the proof is in the pudding" then here are some pics for you.
To try these lights out we took two well established Current USA Cardiff aquariums here in Ottawa. Up to this point both tanks had been running 1 x 150W Metal with Phoenix lamps. These tanks are in a sun room, on either side of a gas fireplace as you will shortly see in pictures that follow. On one tank (that will appear on the left in the comparison picture) we left the tank as is, running the Current USA 150W metal halide on the Current USA ballast. We connected the halide to a Blue Planet EM100 energy meter and we found that the continual power consumption once the ballast had been running for 17 min was very steady at 164W. On the second tank (that will appear on the right in the comparison picture) we took the Cardiff trim kit and mounted 2 x 15" 50/50 Reef Brite LED strips in the center and on either side we mounted 2 x 15" Actinic Reef Brite LED strips. Although it has no impact on this test, we mounted attached the LED strips together in pairs (one 50/50 and one actinic) and attached each pair to a set of hinges to make it easier to access the tank in the future. For the purpose of the test we did not take the stock 150W metal halide pendant down off the tank as this would require us to move it away from the wall and for the purpose of testing out the lights, this seemed like a bit much. Here is a top view of the light mounted in the trip kit for the Cardiff: Here is a side view of the light mounted in the trip kit for the Cardiff: As you can see in the picture the LED's are running, not the halide. To connect all 4 of the Reef Brite LED power supplies into the one energy meter we connected them all to a power bar with a built in time that would be used after this test to control the lighting. Then we connected the power bar to a second Blue Planet EM100 energy meter and found that the power consumption was steady at 53 watts as soon as it was turned on. In all fairness we did forget to take a picture of the max power consumption but it was 54 watts. So now after all of this reading I suppose you want a shot of the tanks :) Well here they are. We took this picture from a slightly elevated position so that you could see the Reef Brite LED strips on top of the right hand tank and so that you could see that the halide suspended there was not actually running. In the pictures above the left hand tank is running a 150W metal halide with a Phoenix lamp while the right hand tank is running 4 x 15" Reef Brite LED's. In our opinion it is clear that the right hand tank, running the LED's is significantly brights in intensity than the halide tank and most importantly the color is still very similar. |
Here is a pic of some of the tank contents looking pretty good under the Reef Brites.
The anemone is an incredible hulk flower anemone and the acans are of course some Aussie acans. Also if you have a look at the gravel you can see the shimmer from the LED's across the bottom |
LEDs are unquestionably the future of aquaria lighting. The question is how long will it take for the volumes to ramp up so the prices can come down.
Right now, the manufacturers are feeding mightily at the 'early adopter' trough; prices are probably double what they could be. As this effect wears off expect prices to get more competitive. With even a modest allowance for future bulb changes, purchasing an LED fixture will soon make a lot sense vs conventional lights. I'll go out on a limb and predict that within 2 years, you'll be able to buy a quality 48" LED fixture that will replace a MH/T5 setup for $1000 or less. I can hardly wait. In fact, I may not. If I upgrade tanks, I'll consider making my own LED fixture. |
Looks nice. Can you do some PAR measurements?
Also, just for the sake of clarity when comparing LED units, The Reef Brite strips power their LEDs at something like 1.5W or 2W each. |
Yeah LED's are rather pricey, but it is our opinion that the Reef Brite LED strips are VERY well priced especially for a product that is made in the US and NOT in china.
Here are some prices for you: 15" $150-170 24" $205-235 36" $235-270 48" $270-300 So at their current price you are coming in at just above $1000 for LED's today! We have a couple of tank builders in the Toronto area that are already using the Reef Brite's and installing them as the sole source of lighting on tanks up to 30" deep. I dont have any pics of this yet though as the tanks are still a work in progress but I will see what I can do for you. Please note that you can not purchase these from us, but we would be happy to ship them to your local retailer. Also for a fixture type setup you can buy a bracket to attach you Reef Brite LED strips to. The bracket allows you to start with say 2-3 strips and add more in as your tank and budget allow. Additionally if you already have halides you could either suspend one reef brite LED strip on either side of the light for suplimentation or you could buy one of the brackets to attach both stips too. And if you are looking for a new halide reflector, Reef Brite has MH pendants already designed to have the LED strips mounted on them to ensure that the fixture looks very clean! |
Quote:
|
The Reef Brite LED strips actually use 3 W LED's that are being under driven so as to decrease the heat the generate and therefor increasing their live expectancy and depenadbility.
|
Quote:
So as an example let's look at a Cree XR-E 3W cool white LED Q5 bin: @350mA drive current the LED is using about 1W of power and generating about 107 lumens @500mA drive current the LED is using about 1.6W of power and generating about 145 lumens or 1.35 times the output at 350mA @700mA drive current the LED is using a bit over 2W of power and generating about 177 lumens or about 1.7 times the output at 350mA @1000mA drive current the LED is using about 3W of power and generating about 235 lumens or about 2.2 times the output at 350mA. PAR will probably correlate well with the lumen output so you have roughly twice as much PAR running at 1000mA vs. 350mA. Or to put it another way, you can probably light a tank twice as deep with LEDs running at 1000mA vs. LEDs running at 350mA. |
Just as a follow on, I'm not trying to poop on the product or anything of that nature. I just feel that with LED technology being fairly new to our hobby there is alot of misinformation, misunderstanding and marketing hype such that people don't really know exactly what they are getting and what the particular LED fixture they are buying is capable of doing. The manfacturers don't help in this as they don't release important specifications on their products and they don't publish PAR numbers (which they must have tested).
So what happens is a customer buys an LED unit to replace MH or T5HO or whatever and then it doesn't have the results or performance they believed it would so they conclude LEDs are no good and get on the interwebs and talk about how bad LEDs are and how their corals stopped growing or lost colour etc. I believe LEDs are the future of reef aquarium lighting and can replace T5HO and MH in most applications if implemented appropriately. That means high quality LEDs driven at 3W with secondary optics if you need very high PAR or want to have penetration in deeper tanks. Bare LEDs without secondary optics for lower light requirements or shallower tanks etc. I believe Reef Brite's literature says these can replace T5 and VHO lighting which probably means (if you read between the lines) that these will not perform as well as MH or T5HO. So they will be great for some applications but not for very high light requirements or penetration into deeper tanks. |
So what depth are you suggesting they would be good for?
|
Quote:
|
Yeah the 4 Reef brite strips is overkill, there is no question about that but I personally love the deep blue color. You will notice that for our test we used 2 50/50 strips and 2 blue strips. So we have only 25% dayight and 75% actinic LED's. This trim kit with the Reef Brite LED's is going on a riccordea tank though so for the corals that we are keeping in the tank we dont need the intensity and tons of blue make the ric's look just awsome.
Now as for feild testing we are doing that right now and on larger tank. We have been running the Reef Brite LED strips as soley a suplimentation addition for a while now and I have comparison pics that will convinve to to go with LED's as supplimentation in a heart beat. And as purely a supliment to the primary lighting sounce the Reef Brites have been selling 10 fold to the dalights. We do have an installer in the GTA installing these LED's on tanks that are 24" deep and tanks that are 30" deep. He did actually raise a question that follows a bit of what you were saying there Ron99, which was is there a way he can increase the power to each LED to 3W so that he can use fewer strips? I dont have an answer to this yet but I will post it if/when I do. Locally we do have a few hobbiests here that are trying the Reef Brite LED's as the sole primary light sourse and so far they are very happy. All of these tanks are 90g and under but realistically thats the average size of most tanks out there. Now we are also testing the LED's as a sole light source on one of our frag tank and so far so good! Frag tanks are not very deep, but we are not using a lot of light either. I am sure Ron99 is aware of this, but one of the issues with LED's is cooling. Thats why most of the units out there come with great big, massive heat sinks. If the unit is not properly cooled the drivers overheat and the light will prematurely fail. This is why the Reef Brite strips underdrive their LED's. You will also notice that the LED's do not go all the way along the full length of the fixture. Instead they are in sections of 6 LED's. As an added bonus though, as the LED's are not the full length of the Strip the shimmer that comes off of these strips is excellent! |
Quote:
I think Ron99 has the right view on this in that until the manufacturers start publishing PAR numbers, the consumer will always be left trying to compare apples to oranges. From a business perspective, I understand how it can be appealing for a marketing department to obfuscate details to a degree but if LEDs are really going to make quick headway in the market, aquarists will need (and hopefully demand) data that will allow them to select an appropriate product for their setup. Perhaps as a distributor, they may take some of these comments from you and actually listen ? One can only hope ! |
I have already emailed Reef Brite to request any info that they have on PAR output. We do have a copy of the spectral output of the strips, but right now its a printed copy with a small graph.
As for PAR output, these strips are supposed to have double the PAR output of an ATI Blue Plus with reflectors, but as for actual numbers I dont have those on hand at this time. I dont suppose anyone here has a PAR meter? Here is a link for the Reef Brites being used as a suplimentation on a large tank for you: http://reefbuilders.com/2010/01/04/r...-feet-of-reef/ And here is another link to them in action on a deep tank with tons of halide lighting: http://reefbuilders.com/2009/12/18/r...ep-reef-tanks/ |
We have sold a few of these ReefBrite strips and so far I have been pretty impressed. We have a few in stock and a few more on the way from Reef Wholesale if anyone is interested in purchasing.
|
Do you have a pic of one of these running on a tank Ian?
I do have a comparison pic I can post. Here is a picture of one of the acans in our coral bed. On the right side you see what the piece looks like under a ATI Power module running with 4 Blue Plus lamps only (whites were off for the pic). The left half is the ATI Blue Plus + 1 Reef Brite LED strip. |
Quote:
Wow, great pictures, the increased fluorescing of the Coral is very noticeable. I don't have any comparisons but I can work on getting some for you. There was an article on Reef Builders not too long ago that showed a 300+ gallon tank lit by nothing but ReefBrite strips. |
Quote:
:) |
I have one 48" blue on order from Ian and should have it running within a couple of weeks:biggrin: Cant wait to see how these look!. Ill be using them as actinics only and am not expecting any par out of them but it would be a plus. I will be runing them with 2 250w xm 10k's
|
Quote:
|
LOL, well I did have quite a few posts pretty much back to back so it was easy enough to miss.
|
Quote:
|
Yup, for actinic supplementation LEDs are second to none. The royal blue ones really make the corals pop.
As for running these at 3W I would suggest not to. As you mentioned heat is the killer of LEDs. These are enclosed and passively cooled and that is why they are underdriven. They would probably burn out quickly if run at 3W. So unless he can open upo the housings somehow and add a bunch of fans to cool them I would leave them running as is. If somebody something that runs at higher power but is still budget oriented the Maxspect units may fit the bill or build a DIY array which will be the cheapest option but the most work. The commercial fixtures that are properly cooled and run the LEDs at full power are very pricey right now. |
I use Reef Brites to supplement my Radium 20k's(yes I love blue) and they supply just the right POP!
|
I just picked up a couple more Reef Brites for my frag tank to replace my 250W MH over it (It was a little over kill over a 15x18x12 tank)
I also picked up the mounting bracket for them http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4096/...ea6a81ffd1.jpg http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4097/...4d70600409.jpg http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4114/...3d7686ab7a.jpg Here is the tank with the 250W 14K MH over it http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4123/...089985b942.jpg And here it is with the 3 x 15" Reef Brites (Total of 36W 2 x blue & 1 x white) http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4082/...430bc7853d.jpg 14K MH http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4101/...c45f8d5096.jpg Reef Brites http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4140/...beef7f62ce.jpg I also added one over my Freshwater tank 130W PC http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4099/...9042b599bd.jpg 48" 40W Reef Brite http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4076/...9175ff6b3f.jpg I just got them so I do not know how well the coral will do under them but for the frag tank I can add another two Reef Brites if I find that it needs it. |
Picture links are all now fixed on page 2. Sorry about that.
|
Here are some pics of my home tank. To big to do all LED's.
8' wide 42" front to back 26" deep and has 2 ~ 250 watt Radium's and 4 ~ 4' all blue reef bright in front of and in back of the radiums. http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c4...oral/tank2.jpg http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c4...gonibommie.jpg http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c4...lsophyllia.jpg http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c4...pdowngoni4.jpg |
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c4...thaphyllia.jpg
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c4...llsofield2.jpg http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c4...ellsofield.jpg http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c4...opdownmaze.jpg I think I will add some 2' Reef Bright's on the ends and in the middle, I need more blue. |
Uhm...thought you were running Plasma Todd.
|
Ummm, no I sent it back to AI. It wasn't dimmable and I didnt like the color.
AI did inform me that it ended up failing not to long ago. He has been unable to get a replacement emitter so its a dead issue for now. |
| All times are GMT. The time now is 01:03 PM. |
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.7.3
Copyright ©2000 - 2025, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.