LED revival
 

well about 1.3 years ago I started playing with LED's for suplementry lighting for tanks, I got good results but cost wise it wasn't realistic to do on a larger tank. well sence I got a 45 gal tank sitting in the garage screaming for me to rebuild the cabnet I have decided to take up the LED bug again. (also having a new job where I have lots of spart time, allows me to do a lot of stuff at work)

this was the results I got on my 25 gal tank back then
http://members.shaw.ca/s.l.s/diy/led/index.html

has anyone continued with this ? ie. played with newer brighter LED's and such?

right now I am looking at setting up a system that will use a wack of LEDs for dusk and dawn graduated lighting, so I will use both 470nm and 430nm LED's and maybe some 385nm ones also, so in the AM the 385's would come on first, then the 430's would light up adding to the total, and finaly the 470's would come on line. I think this would make a stunning visual effect and I am even thinking of carring it on by going with progressivly lighter blue LEDs leading into white lighting, and then reverse everything at night time. need less to say the timer is going to be a pain in the you know what :mrgreen: but I have a couple ideas I am flipping around and once I make sence of them :eek: I will be looking for a second opinion :mrgreen:

I know Kyle was playing with some new ones and he was going to send me one to try out for a bit (and do a PAR test on) but that never materialized. so if anyone has a luxton star and driver for it I would love to be able to do a PAR test on it to see if the extra money is worth it.

at any rate any ideas / questions / complaints are more than welcome.

Steve

Are the pictures of your original set up an accurate representation of the actual colour and brightness?

If so, I think it would be ideal for a deep water species tank.

Darren is monkeying around with all kinds of timers and controls, I don't think he persude the LEDs but I'm sure he has some ideas for a timer control.

Is that something you could use for moonlights? Or is there something better? Wasn't Gujustud working with LED's for lighting a nano?

Walter

Troy,
the bottom pics (the brighter ones) are a accurate visual of the 25 gal tank with 3 LED's. the darker two is to show how actinic lighting screws up a digital camera :mrgreen:
If Darren would start posting again that would be great, but he only stops in to sell stuff laitly :sad:

Walter personaly I felt that test set up would be to bright for moon light but maybe with the lower wave lenght bulbs (like the 380's I am looking at getting) it might be dim enuf. Or maybe using a LED with a greater difusion pattern, like a 120degree focal instead of a 15 or 20.

Steve

Steve, I had a look at two blue LEDs that are a part of the Coralife hoods and they are very close to the brightness and colour of your tank in the pics.

are they for night lights?

Steve

hey Steve, I do have some 5 watt led'skicking around and some drivers for them, I can send them to you bare, so you would need to solder them to the driver temporarly, and they would need a heat sink similar to a computer heat sink as these things have huge thermal issues....

PM me your address and Ill loan them to you....

Since someone brought of the LED topic again. I was wondering if someone could post a basic DIY setup of how to get them working for things like moon lights and things like that.

I had a web link on everything you needed to know to make LED stuff, Let me try find it for you here.

Steve

Hey steve if you are planning on running your lights like that I can make you a controler for them...All you would have to do is tell me how many led's you plan on using and what time's you want them on and for how long.....