LED Life expectancy?

[BCOrchidGuy]

Curious about what you can expect for life expectancy for various LED's. I understand what power they are run at and hours can and or will impact but in general is it safe to put a lifetime on LEDs?

[Dearth]

Depending on the brand and quality of the LEDs you can expect years with them they definitely pay for themselves in the long run as long as you don’t mind shelling out the cash up front

[om6acw]

If you check manufacturer catalog spec sheets you will see that LED life expectancy is ranging from 35k - 100k hours in ideal conditions (proper cooling, current, etc) so I think we can say that they will last longer then average aquarist keeps their tanks running.

[BCOrchidGuy]

Thank you both for your replies, very much appreciated.

D

[whatcaneyedo]

It could be that just the first few generations of aquarium LED fixtures were destined to fail but I'm not sure. Friends of mine have had PFO, Vertex, Ecotech, and Kessil fixtures fail within a few years, usually as soon as their warranties had expired. I've been throughly unimpressed by these results and still run MH which can be found for dirt cheep.

[om6acw]

Originally Posted by whatcaneyedo

It could be that just the first few generations of aquarium LED fixtures were destined to fail but I'm not sure. Friends of mine have had PFO, Vertex, Ecotech, and Kessil fixtures fail within a few years, usually as soon as their warranties had expired. I've been throughly unimpressed by these results and still run MH which can be found for dirt cheep.

Well we have to realize that LED is just small electronic component of a bigger complex electronic machine. In my experience only in 10% cases LED was cause of the failure but in 90% of the cases ether cooling stoped working or LEDs where overdriven because electronics went crazy in driver ending up with burned LED. And in rest of the cases complimentary electronics in form of controllers where cause of failure. So with light fixture this complex comparing it to MH light fixture so simple even with electronic ballast, is not really fair, it

[mike31154]

Yep plenty of variables at play with LEDs as in any electronic component. However, from personal experience, my DIY fixture using generic 10 watt multi-chips from Asia has been going strong for over 5 years now, next April will be 6 years. I just had the first one stop working about a month ago. Had a spare, so fixed within 1/2 hour.