Quote:
Originally Posted by Ron99
High Power LEDs will last the 50,000 hours as long as you keep them cool enough. I think failures were due to poor thermal management. LEDs do not like excessive heat. The Solaris units had pitiful excuses for heat sinks so that was likely responsible for most of those failures. I am going a bit with overkill on mine. But as long as you have adequate heat sinks and run a fan or two to move air over the heatsink the LEDs will last the 50K hours.
Penetration is poor because the output is something like 120 or more degrees wide so it is quite spread out. Adding even 80 degree optics will bump up performance quite a bit. 60 degree optics should give performance equal to or better than 150 Watt MH. 40 degree optics will equal or exceed 250 watt MH and 20 degree optics should reach 400 watt MH PAR levels. For any tank deeper than say 10 inches you need some optics to get better penetration and PAR at depth.
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I have seen the PAR numbers for the new LEDs at the bottom of a tank with water in it and to tell you the truth I wasn't impressed, it was no where near what I have measured on a 150 watt HQI MH, but I don't know if this was the way the guy measure it or what. it was weird as everyone tells me that with this set up you get the same output as (insert whatever) so I think what I am going to do is order a couple LEDs and do some direct comparasons from exact same distances as I am suspecting there is some distance fudging going on
Steve
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