Suppliment Halide's with LED's

Hiab422 · #1 12-15-2011, 01:28 PM

Mike have you thought about just using the Stunner strips for the supplemental led lights.I am going to try them out once my wife gives me back my wallet.

Lampshade · #2 12-15-2011, 02:56 PM

I just started looking at the stunner strips, seems like a good idea. The only issue i have is that they aren't the high power 3W bulbs, so won't have the same penetration to the bottom of the tank. They seems like a very good actinic replacement, but I was hoping to add more par through the 3W's. I think I'm going to go with 36 3W Cree's, 18XPG white and 18 blue.

I put my new halide bulbs in last week, and love them so far, and more importantly, my coral has shown no negative signs. Seems like my 1 year old bulbs had close to the same output as these cheap bulbs. I'm going to put this off for a bit now, and use my fish budget to finish off my stand that desperately needs to be covered, haha.

sphelps · #3 12-15-2011, 03:08 PM

You should check out Steve's LEDs. A cheaper alternative but also there's some info there about using aluminium tube and pressurized fans as for heat sinks which might suit you.

18 blue, 18 white, two drivers, one power supply and two fans will run you about $300 with shipping. The aluminium tube can be purchased locally for pretty cheap.

Royal Blue LEDs
Cool White
Triple Driver
Power Supply
Fans

Hiab422 · #4 12-15-2011, 03:46 PM

My bulbs arrived Monday they work and look great how can you lose for $9.95 a bulb for 15000k de will be ordering a couple of 20000k and see how they look.

Lampshade · #5 12-15-2011, 04:21 PM

THanks, probably going to go with modularLED though. The price is nearly the same, with meanwell drivers. Best of all I don't have to spend a day soldering, which with the chaos in my house means that it won't happen for 6+ months. It's taken me nearly a year to build my arduino controller because finding time to bring it out is near impossible. I'm just going to use an aluminium channel for a heat sink, with 6+ temp sensors on it that will shut off the LED's on high temp. If it happens often I may upgrade, but shouldn't be too bad.

Lampshade · #6 12-15-2011, 04:27 PM

Those drivers/power supply are nice though, and cheap, haha. I'll look into them a bit more. Says it can take PWM inputs, so could work pretty well.