LED Lighting - DIY vs Premade Fixtures
 

Hi,

I am looking at putting LED lighing in my tank, I been looking online and there are companies that have fixtures that will produce metal halide equivalent light. At the same time I would like to retro fit my existing hood, can I get the same type of intensity with a DIY kit or should I buy one from a manufacturer?

Thanks for you help.

I'd go DIY right now. The technology is moving along so quickly that you can get more advanced LED's using a DIY setup compared to the newest fixtures. Make sure you look for the best LED's out there right now, which are made by CREE. There are a few companies out there that sell DIY equipment including a canreef sponsor out of Red Deer, modularled.ca. You don't even have to solder with modularled's equipment, making it much simpler than other companies. You'll need to do your research to determine what you need depending on your tank size and what you want to keep in it.

After doing DIY I would never do it again, you really don't save any money, a little but not worth the effort. My fixture cost more than 2 radions which would probably do the exact same thing I wanted mine to. Plus it's much harder to sell a DIY fixture if you ever wanted/needed to.

I'm shocked you didn't save any money on yours compared to radions. My costs are looking to be about half of any other fixture out there, and more than half on radions.

ponakareefer what type of tank did you put LED's in?

I am waiting on modularled to get the new HEW's in and then I will be putting them over my 125 gallon reef. I don't have any SPS, so the light demand isn't huge.

I spent well over $1500 on mine and that's before the controller I just added. I had to do a little R&D to find out how much or certain colors I needed to add to get the effect I wanted without causing negative effects so I did buy a few more LEDs than I needed but not that much more. I will also admit I think I added more LEDs than I actually needed but again it's a somewhat unknown variable and a little experimenting is needed, all costs money. Then you have to consider the time envolved in building it, mine time was huge, if I spent the same time working some extra hours at work I would be able to buy many Radions with the extra cash. Then when you're all done you gotta go buy a $400 par meter just see what level to run the thing at.

The radions are only about $750 each, everything is done and figured out for you and you'll even find PAR reading on line for various outputs. All you have to do is just plug them in and they even come with warranty.

So it's a no brainer for me at this point but if you really enjoy spending your time building such things then it may be worth while but other than that it's hard to see an upside to DIY these days.

There's also no way you could replicate a radion for less or even close to half the cost. 120W of the latest and greatest LEDs will run you upwards of $200, 5 independent PWM drivers will run you another $200, then the heatsink, wire, fasteners, fans, grease and all the other stuff will run you over $100. So you're already over $500, then add your controller which is also wireless on the radion with nice software that anyone could use. You'd need a 5 channel Arduino controller and the ability to code in C+ language to do a standard wired version and that's already $200+. Plus think about what that will actually look like when it's done, it won't be pretty ;) And that doesn't include the nice reflector the radions have to create better color mesh and single point effect.

I just finished my led fixtures. Got 2 24led kits from aquastyle.com , showed up in 4 days got to pick my colors and the kits came with 24 leds heatsink , drivers , rehostats , fans /fan drivers , wire , heatsink epoxy . Both kits and shipping cost me 265 to my door .All said and done im super happy , sure there not crees but there super bright and the colors are fantastic and i dont think you could be the price.

For a while I was thinking about DIY. Since seeing the price drop on the AI Sols, I decided to spend an extra little bit of money and have something that I KNOW will work. I vote for the Sols. Personally I think that the Radions are too gimmicky. I don't understand the need for red and green... I like the blue tint.

um.. you don't need to buy that and if you want one you could have bought a apogee for 99 bucks that you use your multimeter to read.

generly from what I have seen people that spend more than it would have cost to buy a set up for there tank, end up with a way better system. granted the looks might not be as good for some, but I think your wood case is nicer than any metal one I have seen.

Steve