Show Us Your LED Tanks

[sphelps]

Originally Posted by kien

Cost of entry is definitely high, but there are good LED units that are quite reasonably priced. For example, you can get an AI Sol unit for roughly $400. In my mind that's pretty reasonable. Of course you can easily go up in cost from there to the Mitras at $1200 (retail) per unit. Not everyone needs a $1200 Mitras though. There are plenty of people (as we've seen in this thread) doing quite well with their $400 AI Sols :-)

Keep in mind you'll need 2 sols for 1 Mitra so really comparing $800 to $1200 which isn't as big of a gap. Then when you compare features like built in controller, full spectrum and so on you may conclude the Mitra is also pretty reasonable

There are lower cost units that get the job done but ultimately you're getting what you paid for. Like the D120s, I had to open the fixture up to change the power cord orientation. Doing so I discovered it's basically just a thin aluminium plate with LEDs directly mounted to that, wired to two basic power supplies with a dimmer and three noisy cheap fans. Pretty obvious why they are so cheap but they do work and whatever I put under them seems to do really well but it's a shallow tank so the output is really low, not sure I'd trust the cooling capabilities at full power.

[kien]

Originally Posted by sphelps

Keep in mind you'll need 2 sols for 1 Mitra so really comparing $800 to $1200 which isn't as big of a gap. Then when you compare features like built in controller, full spectrum and so on you may conclude the Mitra is also pretty reasonable

Yes, it's definitely reasonable if you need all of those features. Not everyone needs all those bells and whistles though. As demonstrated in this thread, there are lots of nice tanks running LED lights without any controllers or full spectrum. I'm not about to tell those people that they need more expensive Mitras :-)

And yes, if you want the same output as a Mitras, then you will have to add additional (cheaper units). But then again, not everyone needs the kind of output that the Mitras provides. There are people dialing down the output of LED units that have less maximum output than the Mitras.

[sphelps]

Originally Posted by kien

Yes, it's definitely reasonable if you need all of those features. Not everyone needs all those bells and whistles though. As demonstrated in this thread, there are lots of nice tanks running LED lights without any controllers or full spectrum. I'm not about to tell those people that they need more expensive Mitras :-)

And yes, if you want the same output as a Mitras, then you will have to add additional (cheaper units). But then again, not everyone needs the kind of output that the Mitras provides. There are people dialing down the output of LED units that have less maximum output than the Mitras.

More of a spread issue than output relating to using multiple units. For example if you need to cover 36x36" you really can't use 1 sol regardless how low your light demands are, unless you hang it unpractically high that is.

[sphelps]

A work in progress but my latest LED tank, seems fit to post it here seeing it's a play on my old LED fluval edge I previously posted