DIY LEDs in Canada?

[Strickland_673]

I have been looking for a company that manufactures/sells DIY LED retrofit kits in Canada. I have found a good site RapidLED but they only ship within USA. So does anyone have a contact or company that does such work as RapidLED???

Ok so I found out that Rapid LED does ship to Canada!!! this is the system I am looking at:

http://www.rapidled.com/servlet/the-...ium-LED/Detail

SO with this setup on a 25g (15" deep) what will this light sustain, with my 2X24W T5HO Hagen Glo??

Thanks.

[Strickland_673]

NOBODY?

[NanoHuman]

I built my own CREE high power LED system but could not find anything available in Canada.

Everything is in the US.

[Pop Alexandra]

Originally Posted by NanoHuman

I built my own CREE high power LED system but could not find anything available in Canada.

Everything is in the US.

Have you tried NDR? I found they have a lot of LED systems in stock.

[Craigdillman]

Vouch for rapid led !!! they are awesome i ran there DIY for years and now im still running there corona and its been epic

there support is some of the best

you'll be happy

[mseepman]

I've been running my DIY led light for over 7 years now and although I'm currently having a few issues, my lights have been excellent. About 75% of them came from Rapid and the rest came from Reefleds. Both were very good to deal with but I get the sense that Rapid is more involved in the aquarium industry these days. Remember when you build your lights you need to keep in mind the forward voltage on each string. I ended up trying to mix bins up when I first was making the lights but found large differences by bin in the forward voltage and ended up not mixing things.

[marcingo]

Friend of mine is planning on ordering from RapidLED as well.

The systems come with Cree bulbs which are supposed to be the best.

According to my research the XP-G Cree is the best.

Then you decide on your lens 40 degree 60 degree 80 degree and 100 degree.

Lower the degree the more concentrated the light the smaller the spread.

I personally have just ordered a light fixture from China that runs on Cree XPE bulbs at 3 watts. Most systems are brought down to 1 watt to extend their useful life.

I believe most good systems run on these Cree bulbs.

One thing to remember from what I have read on LED is that the watts per gallon rule does not apply. To the human eye the LEDs might not look as bright as the metal halide but some people have reported their corals have bleached due to too much light from the LEDs even though it looked like it was dimmer than the MH.

It is still pretty underused in the hobby so finding info is difficult.

I started a thread on a 10 gallon nano that I will be running these cree bulbs on to inform people of my findings. My setup is 10 (12k) Cree white bulbs and 2 453 nm blue. All are 3 watt

We will see what happens.

Hope that might be some useful info for you.

[Big Tang]

Try reef led lights .com

[StirCrazy]

I don't know if I would get that kit as it has the "G" bulbs and seeing as they are a lot more powerfull than the "E"s I am wondering how much spotting you'll get. also you only get optics for the "E"s why????

as for this kit being enough on your 25, depends. one kit alone on there will look real bad, two kits with no optics might work, but idealy I would be guessing at 3 kits for a 25 and you will be good to keep anything. also looking at the drivers they are only 700mA instead of 1000mA and they are not dimable.

so I was looking around the site and found this kit.
http://www.rapidled.com/servlet/the-...LED-DIY/Detail

I would sell the T5's and then get this one for the 25 gal tank. but the only change I would make is to buy one more driver so you have 2 for the white and 2 for the blue (would cost and extra 30 bucks) that way you can dim the colors independent.

A 25 gal tank is a little deeper (18") so if you wanted to keep SPS you could go with the 40 degree optics and you will have all the PAR you need and the ability to dim white or blue to get the exact color you like. if you not a big SPS person then choose the 60 ot 80 degree lense.

Steve

[Ron99]

This has come up a few times and sadly there are no suppliers in Canada. A few places could probably special order some but you'll probably end up paying more then you would just ordering yourself. Heatsinks are more difficult. I believe Heatsink US will ship to Canada but it is expensive. I found some used surplus heatsinks on eBay for less then half of what it would have cost to buy new. Also, check out nanotuners.com as they have LEDs (XP-Es and XR-Es which will be plenty of light for a small tank), drivers and optics at good prices as well as the adhesive thermal pads that make assembly far easier.

If you plan to use these in addition to your T5s then you could do two rows of LEDs, one in front and one behind the T5s which would probably be in the middle. If you are going all LED then add a 3rd row to the mix. Space the LEDs 2 to 2.25 inches apart and use 60 degree optics for that depth of tank. You can leave a bit of extra room at the ends (3 to 4 inches). So for a 24" wide tank I would use 8 to 10 LEDs per row. so that gives you 16 to 20 LEDs for two rows or 24 to 30 LEDs if you are going three rows. You can use the ELD 60-48 drivers. Each will drive up to 13 LEDs so for a 24 LED setup you could go with two drivers, one for blue and one for white. These are dimming drivers to so you could set up a nice sunrise/sunset effect with a controller of some sort. You buy the P or the D version depending on how you want to end up dimming them.