led lighting?
 

Im finally moving into a town house where i can set up a reef. Tomorrow im buying a 120gal tank that is five feet long. What im trying to figure out is how many led lights would i need to properly light the tank. I would like to be able to grow sps. Please give me some advice as it seems watts aren't a key issue when it comes to led's.

any thoughts?

dimensions of tank? and what color you look for? 14kish?

led
 

depends on the coral-some of the frags i have have bleached and some are growing-par is between 200-300 with the vortex illumina

I'm sorry, the lady im buying from did not know the dimensions as she is selling the tank for her sister. I do know it is 5ft long. My problem is this: whenever i read about led's i feel like i need a "led dictionary" as i have no idea what the terms being used mean. I found a few setups on ebay ie. http://cgi.ebay.com/300w-LED-Aquariu...ht_4063wt_1141 would this be enough??? or should i buy more. Sorry for being so un-educated on the issue.

Thanks for any help

well that wouldnt be enough for a 5foot tank
plus i wouldnt buy those types of fixtures if I were you.

you can build your own which is what im doing and im doing a group buy right now
Group buy: http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=70376
Build Thread with parts: http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=70413


4 a 5 foot 125g which probably is around 22 tall 22 wide

if you look at the some of the 3w cree leds in that group buy and you are looking for a 14kish colors

you would need about 72 royal blue and 48 cool white with 40degree optics at about 11inches from water
and you can tune from there adjusting the amps to get the right color and brightness as long as you have them on dimmable drivers for each color

if you want an LED fixture I would go with either the vertex like monocus has or http://www.aquaillumination.com/

or hire me to build it!

btw im partial to the CREE leds thats why im saying i dont like the ebay link and no one has tried them out or tested. big difference between one LED to the next.

these are not good for reef systems as i have cheeked on them in the past.
1W led not high enough output. you need 3w led.
they have no optics,at 90 degree angle nothing much is reaching your corals in the tank.

I have a 120g its 60lx18wx24h and have a diy led on it. 64 royal blue, 64 white. I use luxeon rebel 3W running at about 75%. They seemed the best at the time. This seems to be enough for my few SPS. They are starting to grow from frags decently. My zoos dont seem to like it though as they dont really grow, some just melted away. That might be an unrelated issue though. Frogspawn loves it, torch not so much. I have no optics and about 4 inches from the water.

With LEDS it not so much the watts -as you stated- but the par values. Im still tweeking mine to see what works.

If you have very basic electronics abilities and time you can easily make your own DIY setup. It just takes patience and creative ability. Its very fulfilling and impressive to say you made it.

How much>? lol name the price and i will have to evaluate.

Milad "or hire me to build it!"

If you are unsure about building your own (or hiring someone to build it) then you might want to take a look at one or two of these with CREE lights in them.

https://www.fish-street.com/key_aqua...ategory_id=118

I am planning to build my own too and if you have the budget, Milad appears to be the right track for making a great light so he might be the right person to do it for you.

Well I did mine about 2 years ago and have had an expensive learning curve.

With the knowledge out there now that can be reduced significantly. I paid about 4 bucks an led and the drivers - meanwell CLG-150-24A - were about 250 dollars for both. I made my own custom heatsink since I couldn't find one in canada and heatsinkusa was to much for shipping - i was trying to be a cheap bugger.
Within months of running one test panel - around 60 LEds i had the entire panel failed due to heat - lost most of the leds. Redesigned the heatsink with fans and now have not lost a single LED in almost 2 years.

The failure was the result of not having a splash shield - acrylic plate - between the water and the LEDs and not having any fans running.

Now I swear by LEDs. Cost me a bit more than a Metal halide setup but I have zero heat issues in the tank and only 300 watts power consumption - probably less with the drivers running only 75%.

did you end up putting a clear acrylic splash shield on the leds? what height are they above your water?

Ryan if you want to build your own, you can check out my led thread and also the parts list post (http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/sho...4&postcount=12) with the prices and links which im keeping up to date

your tank is slightly smaller than mine so it would be close to the same LEDs. Im doing 144 LEDs instead of 120 but I think you would still need to two 3 modules unless you only have one brace in the middle for 5 foot then you can do two big modules.

I could build one for you for half the price of the commercial ones but if you have time, and are not in a huge rush to setup your tank then I would just build one your self. Its really rewarding and you dont need to know too much about electronics. the hardest part is probably soldering and thats more tedious than hard.

Im aiming to do mine under $1500

also, do you have a controller? if so you can dim these bad boys and make a nice sunrise and sunset.

I have 2 modules with an acrylic splash shield spaced about 0.5 inch from the leds. I have both modules hanging 3.5 inches above the water line. The modules and drivers sit in a frame made out of 1" x 1.5" aluminum angle hanging from the ceiling.

I am looking at later changing out the drivers to ones able to have a pulse width signal to dim them for sunrise/sunset but that is in the future when I finish building my new controller.

I believe the rule of thumb is about 1 LED per 12 square inches. So if the tank is 60" long and 18" wide you'd need at least 90 LEDs. With SPS you always want to go over the recommended base line so personally I would be aiming for between 120 to 144 LEDs. I wouldn't use 40 degree optics as they don't actually spread the light evenly over a 40 degree spread, they will concentrate most of the light at around 20 degrees which can create hot spots which although not noticeable to our eyes I don't think it's ideal for coral. 60 degree optics would be better IMO but I'm no expert.

The all in one kits are really easy to build, anyone who has used a soldering iron before can easily do it.