Bridgelux leds? vs. cree leds?

[WaVe RiDeR]

looking into getting leds for my deep blue 60 gallon shallow tank. I plane on have two separated rock islands at both ends of the tank, so i was thinking about two different fixtures over the two different aquascapes.I had been searching around and i am going the diy way cheapest and people have had great results with the diy kits, the question is witch is the better of the two? cree is better know but Bridelux might just be as good? anyone feel free to chime in and share any experiences.

 

[WaVe RiDeR]

anyone???? would really help.

 

[doonan75]

Ther is a lot of discusion about them both. Cree have more par per watt but bridgelux are cheaper. I have bridelux and they do fine for me. I use the Eshine 50x3w with 50/50 royal blue and what they said was cool white. The whites are yellowish I'd say 6.5-7K by themselves and the RB are really bright the two together look about a 14K look. I went from halides from prior tank and the colors def are more natural under the halides but the leds really bring out the "pop". I moved most of the LPS to the sides in shadier areas on the bottom due to bleaching and the SPS I started on the bottom and slowly moved them up they bleached a little but after a few weeks and heavier feeding they colored back up my purple monti I split into two frags one high up and one midlevel and the midlevel one is definately the faster growing one it's pretty much doubled in size over the last 3 months. Hope that helps. try using the advanced search option to get more info.

 

[doonan75]

Forgot to mention they are over a 40 breeder about 8 inches up.

 

[WaVe RiDeR]

Eshine 50x3w? you mean these?and do you have any pics of your set up?

 

[doonan75]

I'm at work so I can't post photos. My lights are the 50x3w bridgelux I think it's either the 3g aquabar or the 3G aqua panel. Mine has 2 cords one for white and one for blue. No dimmer but they do have that option. Mine was 190 shipped to my door and they are really helpful with question if you go to their site and IM chat with one of their reps I got mine through robin. It took less than week from order to door. The only complaint I have is that I wish it was wider.

 

[WaVe RiDeR]

http://www.eshinepcb.com/aqua/3g-led-aquarium-light.html

 

[doonan75]

Thanks those are them.

 

[wrx1908]

I have aquastyles over my 40B and I love the color
http://youtu.be/h5UeSnhOv_8

 

[WaVe RiDeR]

I have aquastyles over my 40B and I love the color
http://youtu.be/h5UeSnhOv_8
nice tank, are those the strip leds?

 

[wrx1908]

yep but the only have RB and CW on the strip its much better to go with NW and WW DIY

 

[joelespinoza]

I just ordered 3 Luxeon Royal Blues from stevesleds, they are supposed to be 440-450nm so they should be a nicer color than the normal 450-460nm CREE XT-Es, we will see when they come in.

Most of the LEDs on his site are $2.99 or less right now, that includes the Luxeon RB and the CREE XT-E RBs. He also lists bin numbers and whatnot.

I ordered last night at: Order Date: Fri, Jun 1, 2012 11:24:37

I got an email from him at 5:58 am this morning saying that the LEDs are shipped. We will see how fast they actually come in, but so far I am impressed.

 

[joelespinoza]

I am very impressed with stevesleds shipping speed. I ordered at nearly midnight on Friday and had them here by Monday. That was just his standard shipping, I did not pay extra.

Unfortunately I left my soldering gun up at my girlfriends moms house, so I wont be able to assemble my little nano light for at least a week.

 

[salty55]

I curious to see how the philips led's turn out for you. Im considering adding some to my existing setup. With the comparable (or supossedly better) performance of cree, and the price of bridglux, these may be the way to go!

 

[mike r]

i got my kit for my 29bc from rapidled. i got the cree 24 led dimmable kit. i went with 14 rb and 10 cw. love the color and am only running the cw at 20% and the rb at 30%. with them both at 100% you cant even look at the tank!

 

[scolley]

IMO you should be asking about aesthetic differences between these LEDs. If you save a bunch if money buying one, only to find your results look like cr*p, then you're going to be an unhappy camper.

Bottom line... Forget about the trivial cost difference and explore the color differences. Money saved for poor color rendition is money thrown away, IMO.

PS - I'm not advocating one brand over the next for color. I'm trying to shift the conversation from cost to color.

 

[joelespinoza]

IMO you should be asking about aesthetic differences between these LEDs. If you save a bunch if money buying one, only to find your results look like cr*p, then you're going to be an unhappy camper.

Bottom line... Forget about the trivial cost difference and explore the color differences. Money saved for poor color rendition is money thrown away, IMO.

PS - I'm not advocating one brand over the next for color. I'm trying to shift the conversation from cost to color.

I absoutely agree with this 100%, I now think that anyone who is planning to try using LEDs should play with nano tanks. YOU SHOULD NOT TRUST ANYONE ELSES RECOMENDATION, YOU HAVE TO SEE THE COMBO YOURSELF IN PERSON. After spending a ton of cash on my main display, I am VERY disappointed with the color, and there is nothing I can add to fix that color, all I can do is replace, which gets even more expensive.

However to build a light for ~5 gallon nano tank is dirt cheap. Especially for people like me who keep old computer parts and old power transformers.

I can order 3-5 LEDs or a small LED panel and slap them on a old CPU/GPU heatsink and power them with a used power transformer that closely matches their mA and voltage requirements, and then I have a $20-$40 experiment instead of a $500-$1000 experiment.

My recomendation for stevesleds was not only for price and shipping but also because he gives bin numbers and at least states that he is always looking for the lowest nm bin numbers for his royal blue LEDs from both Phillips and CREE (Yes he does have Royal Blue CREEs for $3 right now too). However I feel my recomendation at this point is not really worth much until I get said LEDs wired and see how I like the color of my nano tank, as well as take a few pics.

Hopefully that will be tonight, I should be able to borrow a soldering gun from work and get some pics.

Really though I cant wait for my 420nm 20 watt panel to come in: http://www.ebay.com/itm/20W-420nm-U...932?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f15015e94

So far it is the most reasonable looking solution I have found to replace actinic color in LED setups, however I will not know until I get it over my nano and see.

 

[pwreef]

Hahaha Cree price war is on! That 420nm you posted looks interesting.

 

[joelespinoza]

Hahaha Cree price war is on! That 420nm you posted looks interesting.

I dont know why it would be a price war..... It is all about getting a product you prefer. Paying any extra 10% for a fixture you like vs a fixture you think is ugly is a no brainer is a total win.

Here is a data sheet on CREE XTEs:

http://www.cree.com/~/media/Files/C...odules/XLamp/Data and Binning/XLampXTE_BL.pdf

So the bin number looks like this: SSSSCC-C-DDD-FFF-NN-NNNN

SSSS - Series (XTEA = XT-E)
CC - Color (RY = Royal Blue)
C - Configuration
DDD - Dominant wavelength group (Lower nm is better D36 = 450-452.5)
FFF - Radiant Flux (Higher is better 34 (N) is highest)
NN-NNNN - Internal Code

So in a nutshell the ideal CREE XT-E Royal Blue for our purposes would be XTEARY-C-D36-34N-NN-NNNN

Last 6 Ns and C are not important.

 

[joelespinoza]

This is the stevesleds that I got, I used 3 of their 440-450nm Philips Luxeon ES Royal Blue 3 Watt LEDs, and 1 Philips Luxeon ES Warm WHITE 3 Watt 4,000K LED.

I would say that the color of the Royal Blues is MAYBE a bit deeper than the CREE XT-E Royal Blues I got before, but honestly if they were not both sitting right in front of me I probably would not be able to tell them apart.

So I would consider them equal to CREEs as far as I am concerned, they may be more or less efficient, I dont honestly care that much, any LED lighting I do will likely be far more par than needed by the time I like the way it looks.

However I do have to say I REALLY like the look of the 3 royal blues together with the warm 4,000k white. I honestly thought it was VERY nice color combo personally and the brief test of the purplish stuff I dropped had very nice color rendering.

Cree Royal Blues only:

Luxeon Royal Blues only:

3 Luxeon Royal blues, 1 Luxeon Warm (4,000k) white:

3 Luxeon Royal blues, 1 Luxeon Warm (4,000k) white:

3 Luxeon Royal blues, 1 Luxeon Warm (4,000k) white: