[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by Ron99

It's good to see somebody trying this technology out. I still think LEDs hold alot of promise but mainly for DIY right now. The commercial fixtures are way to expensive and not always built well. I saw some pictures of a PFO Solaris dismantled and it was not very impressive. The heatsinks were a joke. So I'm not surprised they were failing. Maybe the Aqua Illumination ones are better but still pricey.

I'm going to build my own LED fixture for my new 65 gallon tank. Total cost of parts will probably be around $1000. But the equivalent Solaris fixture was close to $4000 and the quality of components for the DIY will be much higher. The only think I will be missing is the controller for sunrise/sunset etc. but that can be added later.

I am starting to shy away from building an LED set up now, the more I read about LEDs the less I want them, so this plasma bulb is very interesting to me. this bulb is rated to retain over 80% of its output after 20000hours, which means if you run it for 8 hours a day every 6.8 years you need to change the bulb.

form what I have been reading about new High power LEDs is that they lose 60% of there output after aprox 2 years, and don't last 50K hours as the high power ones have a much shorter life span. I would say with a 60% average output loss in a couple years, you would be replacing LEDs every 2 years.. also the penatration is actualy quite pour compard to other point source lighting.

having said all this I am still concidering building a LED set up, but beforI do I have to do a lot more research and concider some pretty undesiriable trates.

Steve