chinese led lights

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stevercleeze

stevercleeze

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does anyone out there have an opinion on led lighting systems direct from china? when i look at the stats of alot of these light panels it shows some pretty positive looking numbers, for example i just looked on alibaba and one seller is selling a 120x1w led panel with bridgelux/epistar chips. 60 14k bright white and 60 455nm blue leds.
http://www.aliexpress.com/product-g...trol-120W-led-aquarium-light-wholesalers.html
i have heard about cheap build quality and low par numbers but i wonder how much of this is really true on a consistent basis. there are always lower quality systems out there but when you can get lets say this panel for 189$ vs the ecoray 112 with nearly the same numbers for 579$ you have to ask if the difference is that real or just a bit of hype. i would appreciate any input from anyone out there with any experience with these lights. thanks everybody
 
You get what you pay for. You should never skimp on lights with the amount of money we have in these tanks.
 
stevercleeze said:
is a honda civic a bad car because a ferrari is a better car? ;)
Click to expand...

Your analogy doesn't apply here.

A honda isn't really known to catch fire when you're not around either.

Any reefer would tell you it's their "opinion" that you shouldn't skimp on lighting or pumps.
 
i had a guy say that same thing to me about my current light fixture. i tire of the attitude that all manufacturers of lower priced items are always made like sh.t. the light i have now was 500$ cheaper than the "non-spontaneously combusting" brand. when i opened it up to replace the stock MH's with Phoenix 14k"s i inspected the wiring and the connections and found nothing unsafe. There are always going to be badly made products out there, that is why im asking the reef central community for advice. Im not looking for blanket assumptions about all lower cost items.
 
i would say look somewhere else-- even the biggest seller of china lights for saltwater applications seems to have moved to cree leds, and is selling 2 and 3 watt versions, and liquidated his one 1 watt versions he was using
 
The latest version of the “Chinese” LED lights now come with 3W LEDs running at 2 watts. The difference between these lights and the higher priced lights (where many of those also come from China), is that these have no heat sinks and are not “controllable.” Otherwise these produce enough light to grow everything. We have a LFS that exclusively uses these lights and his display tanks and frag tanks look fantastic, and the corals grow just fine.

HERE’s an example of the newer version
 
Holy cow redfish for the price of that led fixture why not? I mean we spend mor than that on bulbs for our t5 fixtures in 2 years. I might have to try them out.
 
I purchased two of these 120W LED fixtures on eBay for a test. They contain three cooling fans to keep the unit cool.

They work fine with the exception of a few issues. There is no way to adjust the output of the lights and the hanging system sucks.

I had one of the lights fail, only white would come on; I contacted the eBay seller and got the fixture replaced with no hassles. I shipped the broken one back a within a few days they sent me a new one. My experience with their customer service was as good as any and better than some big name online retailers.

However the lights do function quite well. They have independent switches for blue & white, they are producing a very nice color; all coral frags are growing very well and have excellent color. I did away with the factory hanging kit and went to four very small linked chains, one from each corner, on each fixture. I threw together an open top canopy out of extra materials I had on hand and made it tall enough to allow me to raise the fixtures up to about 16 1/2 inches. For me I found the best height to be around 12 -13 inches above the water.

These lights a currently are used on a 75 gal. with black egg crate frag racks. One level is about 1/3 up from the bottom and the other level is about 2/3 up from the bottom.

I recently purchased an AI SOl system for my 180 gal. SPS reef and so far I am happy with the setup. I still had to build a custom canopy to house the lighting. I didn't want to hang the unit from my ceiling and with AI's frame & legs the lights sit almost right on the water. I bought them primarily for the programmability features of the fixtures. The setting options are almost endless which allows for any type of effects you may want.

I do believe if I were setting up a 4' tank like a 75, 90 or maybe even a 150 tall I would simply use the cheaper China made LED's or what some call the black boxes. Two of these fixtures would work on any of these aquariums. The only thing you would have to do is play with the height adjustment.

They work good are cheap and the eBayer I dealt with stands behind their product. I recently saw them on eBay for about $145.00 with free shipping
 
I'm currently running the 3W Chinese black boxes (that run at 2W) mentioned above. My LFS store sold them to me, and they've sold quite a few. Regarding Chinese, where exactly do you think most every consumer product is made nowadays? Sure, having an american company name on it sometimes helps with quality control. But in the end, I'd say my lights appear to be pretty high quality. My BlueWave metal halide balast that crapped out after 8 months, made in China. Imagine that...
 
I have heard nothing but bad things when it come to these lighting fixtures. They might be okay on softie tank but I wouldnt trust them on a sps tank. I all depends on what your trying to grow.
 
be careful when buying a LED fixture that only uses 1 watt bulbs as apposed to 3 watt bulbs. those 2 extra watts make a huge difference in intensity and total output. i tried a 1 watt bulb fixture on one of my tanks and a 3 watt bulb fixture on another, the growth was alot faster on the 3 watt, the color was better on the 3 watt, the temperature was a few degrees lower on the 1 watt, the intensity was noticeably brighter on the 3 watt. i personally wouldnt go with anything other than a 3 watt bulb fixture.
 
thanks for all the input. the original link i posted was before i went to the eshinesystems website and began talking with a sales rep. they offer a bunch of options including a few panels with a combo of Cree 3w xp-g cool white 9000k leds with 3w cree xp-e 450nm royal blue leds for dirt cheap and some fixtures have have dimmers. the website isnt the best to navigate but a rep will send you a price sheet. check it out and share with me your thoughts
http://www.eshinesystems.com/led-aquarium-light.html
 
The problem people are having with those China made led kits is not that there cheap, its that they are not producing the right spectrum needed to grow sps. I know about 3 people who bought a kit just like the one your looking at and all there sps turned brown and things looked horrible.
 
did they buy the lights from eshine systems? did they bother to do any research on the color leds they were buying? if eshine is selling a fixture with 9000k whites and 450nm blues than there should be no problem with the spectrum needed to grow corals. the colors might be too redish/yellowish for those who like a more realistic (blueish) tank but the zooxanthellae should thrive. I find that there is no winning in these forums. As soon as i think i have gotten some good info from people in the know, bam, someone just throws their 2 cents in and ruins it. whether they are in the know or just a representative of a competing company is impossible to know
 
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