chinese led lights
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GroYurOwn
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The pitch has changed on mine since I have gotten them, I don't have them under a hood anymore and they are some what loud, but not annoyingly, just white noise. I am still extremely happy with them.
I agree that the 1 point hanging system can leads to them being off kilter. But again, easily modified. Mine are just sitting on top of my hood for now until I figure out a more permanent solution.
My tank was setup on 2/13, any corals added since then have done well. Everyday I see my blue monti getting bluer, and my orange monti fluoresces more then it did a week ago. I am impressed, for now these are my lights of choice. For the money I don't think they can be beat. I realize these are short term results, but for $159 i think it is worth the risk for the potential reward.
I agree that the 1 point hanging system can leads to them being off kilter. But again, easily modified. Mine are just sitting on top of my hood for now until I figure out a more permanent solution.
My tank was setup on 2/13, any corals added since then have done well. Everyday I see my blue monti getting bluer, and my orange monti fluoresces more then it did a week ago. I am impressed, for now these are my lights of choice. For the money I don't think they can be beat. I realize these are short term results, but for $159 i think it is worth the risk for the potential reward.
BigCountry74
New member
Excellent out of box reviews. These were my thoughts exactly on mine. I hung them on adjustable shelving mounted to the wall (for easy up and down movement) and covered everything with a shadow box (light weight "hang on wall" canopy box I made). I used a rubber grommet to sorta level the 1 unit that had the crooked wires like your describing.
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The blue fluorescence is simple amazing though you are definitely correct there. I only have 2 small LPS frags, but they glow like the Avatar movie with only the blues on. Heck I have 3 boxes, and it lights up my entire kitchen in fluorescence with just the blues on...we own a small dog and he was playing with a tennis ball that was a good 15 feet from the tank and the ball was even glowing like crazy..lol :beer:
Metal halide will still grow the coral faster than these LEDs, but man for color growth, I just cannot see how you can rival LEDs.
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GroYurOwn
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I think the intention of this thread is to determine if that statement is actually true. I don't think that is a foregone conclusion at this point.
TropTrea
New member
I definatly have to agree what you say here.
With LED's there are so many varieties out there and the list is growing almost daily with newer and LED's comming out some brighter and more effecient that what was available last week. With all the variety out there it is impossible to comp-are John's and Jack's LED lights to someone MEtal Hides and say the MEtal hides are better.
For me I went from Metal Hides to Ho-T-5's and think it was a step up. But now that I'm converting to LED's with the versitility of the LED's would no longer consider Metal Hides or T-5's for a new tank. What I'm debating though is the value of converting T-5's completly or patrtialy to LED's.
I see the range of LED fixtures out there from simply garbage to wow but I'd think it can still be improved. For that reason I went with DIY LED's and have changed my set up already 3 times from my initial selection. I mimiced what I liked best initialy on a smaller tank then after few weeks later the ideas to improve it started comming to my head.
Lets face it. There is no perfect system that will make everyone happy. Coral A like one thing, Coral B likes something else, Jack likes something different than what John likes.
It would be interesting to see what a poll would look like if we asked for personal preference between?
Max Coral Growth
Max Coral Color
20,000K lighting
14,000K lighting
10,000K lighting
Unfortunatly it is impossible to have them all? But to an extent it what Im trying to achieve with my LED's. When they intitialy turn on the lighting scheme is much bluer than a 20,000K bulb, but as it gets to Mid Day it is probably in the 12,000K range. Yes my pre dawn and post dusk looks like an avitar movie, but it slowly steps to reality than back to the Avitar world before it hits darkness.
BigCountry74
New member
After band worship practice, I was messing with the stage lights at church last night. They have a monster setup with 60 or so high powered LED cans all tied to a smart board (controller) which you hit and change different sections of the stage with. Was daydreaming how cool it would be to run something small scale like that on a fish tank...you can virtually config and run all kinds of colors/spectrums.....all automated/programmed...heck it might already be available for the fish tank world, just is prob mega expensive...
TropTrea
New member
Yes and it would be mega expensive but very do-able for the DIY fanatic. While I doubt it there will be a lot of these on the market soon there is the potential for it since there are some people that spend big dollars on there tank just to get what nobody else has first.
I realy should not laugh at this as years ago I did spend a lot to get fresh water fish that no one else had only to find that three years later they were flooding the market at 2% of what I initialy paid for them. Then there was what I paid for show quality Bettas for my breeding program. But then I did my money back plus on those fish after about a year selling there fry for 20% of what I paid for the initial male.
But yes that can be designed in very easy only you need to aproach the lighting with that in mind when you first build your LED fixture. Think of at as a smaller version of the LED bulletin boards out there today. Instead of just white or blue LED's each is a cluster of one blue one green, and one red on each star each controled seperatly. They do make the three LED Stars like this already with 3 watt LED's. We would just be using less of them than in a big bilboard, and adding lenses. But it could be a wiring nightmare.
jrp1588
New member
Yeah, I got everything to modify it to a 2 point hanging system from lowes today for around $10.
It's already doable and not terribly expensive, but requires a good bit of DIY ability.
Multiple PWM controller drivers + arduino board + LED's + homebrewing custom control software.
The most expensive part of that is the lighting system, (which wouldn't be any more expensive than a standard DIY LED setup), arduino boards are well under $100, and software compilers can be free.
RDHDDRAGON
New member
I wanted to show the difference in one of my tanks after about 8 months with LEDs.
Before Leds:
About 8 months after installing LEDs:
There was a little rearranging, but not much. Over all the colors are so different. In the bottom left of the bottom picture, see the neon green yuma rock? It is there in the top picture too, just not neon.
Two days ago i installed some UV-B Led strips to see how it would affect the reds. The only changes so far is the blues. Tips of acros and monti rims are turning to a bright glowing aqua blue. At night after my lights go out anything neon green ( hammers, kryptonite candy canes, etc...) keep glowing. Yes, glow in the dark. Not super bright, but you can still see them flouresence.
Here is what my monti looks like now after about 10 months:
I have no doubt LEDS can grow coral. And make them beautiful. As stated before all my softies that were red and changed to orange, are still orange. Hoping the UV will help, we will see. Hard corals that were red seem to have no change, they are still red.
Before Leds:
About 8 months after installing LEDs:
There was a little rearranging, but not much. Over all the colors are so different. In the bottom left of the bottom picture, see the neon green yuma rock? It is there in the top picture too, just not neon.
Two days ago i installed some UV-B Led strips to see how it would affect the reds. The only changes so far is the blues. Tips of acros and monti rims are turning to a bright glowing aqua blue. At night after my lights go out anything neon green ( hammers, kryptonite candy canes, etc...) keep glowing. Yes, glow in the dark. Not super bright, but you can still see them flouresence.
Here is what my monti looks like now after about 10 months:
I have no doubt LEDS can grow coral. And make them beautiful. As stated before all my softies that were red and changed to orange, are still orange. Hoping the UV will help, we will see. Hard corals that were red seem to have no change, they are still red.
jrp1588
New member
If anyone wants to make a better hanging system for these things like me, I found the pieces that ATI uses to hang their lights. They are called griplock. It looks like the parts needed to hang 2 of these lights would run me $55 shipped. This would cost $85 from reefgeek for the name brand ATI hanging kit (which doesn't include the bit that attaches to the ceiling btw.) This would look a lot nicer and be much easier to adjust than chain.
http://www.usalight.com/griplock-system-s/1927.htm
http://www.usalight.com/griplock-system-s/1927.htm
RDHDDRAGON
New member
Three 250 watt 14k Halides and 4 96 watt pc actinics.
TropTrea
New member
I looked quickly through the Arduino threads and cannt see how you could do it for close for to $100.00. If it were simply a matter of turning on 3 and off three or 4 drivers yes but we are talking about someting much more complax here. For starters you would need a very stable power supply with a changing load on it. Then depending on the size of the matix of LEDs we are taliking for just an 8 X 8 matrix two 8 bit output modules. And that is per color so you are realy talking about 6 minimum. Sure if the modules are 16 bit they could handle a matix of 256 LED's. Then your also talking about timing sequences and the LED's would only be pulsing at a high enough frequency that you would not be able to detect.
Not a simple tax for a small controler like your refereing to.
TropTrea
New member
On a side note we now have CREE LED's that are running up to 24 Watts. Bulk pricing on these are around $9.00 each so stey should be retailing around $27.00 each. Sound high but if you think $27/24W = $3.40/3 Watts.
Unfortunatly they are only available in about a dozen versions of White only. But once these start comming in demand it will not be long before they start making the colored versions.
And for all you PAR fenatics they are now offereing a super high PAR LED for Green House lighting. But it is only available in an Amber color. This is why I dislike PAR for Reefs you get higher PAR number with lights that are rich in the Red end of the spectrum but that lighting is almost useless for Corals.
Unfortunatly they are only available in about a dozen versions of White only. But once these start comming in demand it will not be long before they start making the colored versions.
And for all you PAR fenatics they are now offereing a super high PAR LED for Green House lighting. But it is only available in an Amber color. This is why I dislike PAR for Reefs you get higher PAR number with lights that are rich in the Red end of the spectrum but that lighting is almost useless for Corals.
BigAirHarper
New member
What style hanging stuff did you get?
My eshine 24x3W lights arrived in perfect form. They're crazy bright. I'll be posting pics soon.
david pinder
Member
cree s
cree s
am running 15 of these, some corals are fantastic some are blah just thinking they have not adjusted at this point
cree s
am running 15 of these, some corals are fantastic some are blah just thinking they have not adjusted at this point
Just a suggestion on fans. Try Scythe Gentle Typhoons. I use these on the computer I built. They push a good bit of air, but are VERY quiet. My computer has 8 fans in it and the only ones that can be heard are the factory fans mounted on the 2 video cards.
jeffesaurusrex
New member
Well the Reef Angel is open source. It has a PWM and an Analog dimming version. It's only like $220, if you were able to build your own controller and program it then you would surely be able to program this to control the RGB function. Not to mention all the other stuff you get for your $220 like PH controller, heater failsafe, alarms, wavemaker, auto topoff...
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