chinese led lights

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jrp1588 said:
I wonder if there would be any benefit to upgrading the drivers on these lights so they could use all 3 watts per LED. They seem to stay exceptionally cool with their heatsinks and 3 fans. Drivers are a bit pricey though. I think these have 55 LEDs split between 2 drivers. What kind of driver would be needed to drive these to 3 watt?
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With 55 LED's running at 3 Watts each your talking a total of 165 Watts. The comercial drivers only go up to 60 watts for these LED's so you would end up spliting them into at least three strings.

If you want to run these non dimmable I would reccomend the Mean Well LPC-60-1050 driver. It will handle 14 LED's running at 1,050ma. for a comparison with the different CREE LED's it will mean your running
XP-E's @ 3.5 Watts each
XT-E's @3.1 Watts each
XM-L's @ 2.8 Watts Each (these can be run to 3 Amps for 10 Watts)
XP-G's @ 3.15 Watts each

Reagardless which of these you are running they are now all rated to handle 1050 ma. with 55 LED's however you would have to run 4 of these drivers and these trivers are under $30.00 each from most sources.

Now if you want to go adjustable go with the 60-48'D's but these drivers do run up to 1,300ma and you need to set them assure they do not exceed the recomended power for the LED's in your fixture. yes the cost does come up as these drivers are under $35.00 each and you also need a dimming cuircuit and seperate 10 vlot power supply so the cost for 4 drivers wwith controls will be about $50.00 more.
 
Okay ive read the entire thread and ready to buy lights. I have a few questions. First my lights will have to sit on top of tank only 3 inches off the water, will i get enough spread with the 120 watt ebays? Second my tank is 60x24x24 how many would i need? Hoping to get away with just two? Third i have just a few sps, some rose tip bubble anemones, and one clam, and lots of green soft corals or small carpet anemones. I have never figured out what they are but they have gone wild in tank and they look good. Tank is 11 years old and does very well. My third question is would i have to dim these lights? If so I would buy the ones with dimmers. Also I like the one that is 48 inches and has the controller built into side of unit. I have emailed that company with no response but will still try to contact. Budget is around $700 or so. I have a aquanitics constellation t5 fixture now.

Thanks
 
i have chinese leds been running them for about 6 months and they work perfectly. nothing bad about them. corals are growing nice and have been having a lot better turn out then t5 lighting i used to have
 
I have a 48" tank and use 2. I think you'd be okay as long as the extra 6" on either side don't have light demanding coral.

On a side note, I got some SPS frags about a week and a half ago. All of them were fresh frags simply snapped off the mother colony and epoxied directly to the rock. In the week and a half that I'd had them under this light, they have encrusted about 1.5-2mm over the epoxy and shown great polyp extension. Color isn't the best yet as they were all snapped off of lower branches. My established colony of red monti cap has also shown accelerated growth compared to the old ATI sunpower 6x54watt.
 
Origanly bought 6 of the 120 wt chinese lights did like them my problem its been about a yr and 4 of the 6 have lost at least 1 section of lights. Bought 16 units cree from eshines in the last 3 months my corals seem to love them but cant tell you about dependability. Havent had them that long. Did have problems with 3 of them eshines replaced parts promptly. Only 2 with the controllers and dont like them as others stated total electric losss means you have to reprogramm. wouldnt be bad mine are too hard to get too.
 
TropTrea said:
The general standard is using a PAR meter which is realy great for terestial plants and even good for fresh water plants that grow near the surface. The problem with a PAR meter for Reef tanks though is that it evaluates red light and blue light on the oposite ends of the spectrum equally. Therefore you can get a fantastic high PAR reading with a Warm white LED and a Red LED. however corals can only ise a small amount of that red light which you have an abundance of and they will be getting insufficient Blue light which is there main form of natural light.

The spectrum anylizers for light are the ideal way to measure whatt you realy have. However for even the most advanced aquariuasts this equipment is very cost prohibitive.

So we basicly end up using a comprimise with the PAR meter realizing that the light distribution needs to be Blue heavy for the readings to be realistic. There is also an argument that we should be using PUR however there are no reliable meters regardless of price that will give us a true PUR readng. The PUR reading is also misleading as every type of coroal will use slightly or even drasticly different amounts of light compared to another.

Lightt is mad up bsicly of red, green and blue. If you know you have a ratio of roughly 1 part red to 3 parts green and 1 part green to at least 3 parts blue that the PAR can be a valuable guide. When I look at an advertisement that claims a said ligh produces a said PAR the next thing I look at is the type of light sources they are using. If there getting the high PAR a lot of Warm White LED's and only have an equal amount of blue LED's I know they designed the fixture more for the PAR numbers rather than actual coral growth.

If you lo0k at horocultural high PAR lighting fixtures you will notice they are extremly heavy in the yellow to orange part of the color spectrum. While they do produce great PAR numbers and results growing Tomatoes they are useless for the Reef tank with corals.
Click to expand...
Where did you get this info? do you care to link references? what PAR meter are you referring to?

Thanks
 
What optics are you guys ordering??? I am going to be putting together a 110 Tall which is 48" X 30" deep so I am wondering how many units and what optics to run???

Thanks,
Jeremy
 
galkito said:
Hi all,

has anyone tried this one:?
http://eshinesystems.com/aqua/4g-60x3w-cree-led-aquarium-light.html

it is made by e-Shine. Any feedback on them?
I am thinking of buying one and I would really like someone who "œknows" about LEDs to tell me his opinion"¦

Thanks
Click to expand...

I don't know about these personally but I have been looking at them too, but the 48X3 version. I have been emailing them and doing some research. The 48X3 Crees were $395 and Bridgelux $295 with solar controllers--knock about $100- $125 without controllers. With Bridgelux you can ask them to put some red or UV or whatever mixed in---not sure about the Cree. I've been mostly looking at the Bridgelux because of budget. I have read the fans are quieter than the other black boxes. Shipping is really high --- $72 for one, $122.60 for 2, and $128 for three units (48X3s, 60X3 are probably more). Strange thing is this morning's daily email reply stated that if I bought 4 of the lights the price was much, much less. So much that I had to email her back to ask if it was a typo or mistake---no reply yet. Still not sure what I will get. Luckily I have a lot of time to think about it. If you want to discuss anything further or see my email chain with them, PM me.
 
radbluesfan said:
I don't know about these personally but I have been looking at them too, but the 48X3 version. I have been emailing them and doing some research. The 48X3 Crees were $395 and Bridgelux $295 with solar controllers--knock about $100- $125 without controllers. With Bridgelux you can ask them to put some red or UV or whatever mixed in---not sure about the Cree. I've been mostly looking at the Bridgelux because of budget. I have read the fans are quieter than the other black boxes. Shipping is really high --- $72 for one, $122.60 for 2, and $128 for three units (48X3s, 60X3 are probably more). Strange thing is this morning's daily email reply stated that if I bought 4 of the lights the price was much, much less. So much that I had to email her back to ask if it was a typo or mistake---no reply yet. Still not sure what I will get. Luckily I have a lot of time to think about it. If you want to discuss anything further or see my email chain with them, PM me.
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I am looking into buying at least two also, maybe we could go in on a qty. buy for the lower price?
 
jg210302 said:
I am looking into buying at least two also, maybe we could go in on a qty. buy for the lower price?
Click to expand...

Probably won't hear back on their discounted price verification til after bedtime tonight. It really sounded too good to be true. Splitting an order with a forum member might be an option if they lived near me. I do not want to be re-shipping these lights again------- and the other buyer's warranty issues, if there were any, would be something I would rather not have to take care of unless they were local. I am near St. louis MO.
 
radbluesfan said:
I don't know about these personally but I have been looking at them too, but the 48X3 version. I have been emailing them and doing some research. The 48X3 Crees were $395 and Bridgelux $295 with solar controllers--knock about $100- $125 without controllers. With Bridgelux you can ask them to put some red or UV or whatever mixed in---not sure about the Cree. I've been mostly looking at the Bridgelux because of budget. I have read the fans are quieter than the other black boxes. Shipping is really high --- $72 for one, $122.60 for 2, and $128 for three units (48X3s, 60X3 are probably more). Strange thing is this morning's daily email reply stated that if I bought 4 of the lights the price was much, much less. So much that I had to email her back to ask if it was a typo or mistake---no reply yet. Still not sure what I will get. Luckily I have a lot of time to think about it. If you want to discuss anything further or see my email chain with them, PM me.
Click to expand...

Cree does offer Red LED's. However there UV LED's 380 to 405 nm are only listed for medical usage. I had tried some Philips, near UV LED's 410 to 420 nm, 2 in an array of 24 and everyone asked me way was my tank to pink. I pulled them and replaced them with nuetral whites and the tank looks much better.

The Bridglux LED's however are rated at a max of 700ma compared to the Cree's. at 1,000ma plus. At 700ma and 3.7 volts (2.6 watts) the bridglux is slightly dimmer than Cree XP-G at 700 ma and 3.05 Volts (2.1 Watts) these LED's are now rated to run up to 1,500ma @ 3.25 Volts which is actualy 4.8 Watts.

While I know you custom configuer there drivers for these orders the Crees would still be the better deal for total light output. To mee the 100$ difference is well worth it to get the Crees. On a DIY build with 48 LED's the price difference between the Bridgelux and Crees is about $130.00. Actualy a DIY build with the Cree LED's would be in the $350.00 range, dependent on the drivers and heat sinks one used.

The big thing is to make sure they running the LED's at 2.5 Watts each or more. If they are this is great deal.
 
danmartis said:
so which one is better the aquariumleds 120 Watt Aquarium LED 14K 3 Watt LEDs or the one on ebay http://www.ebay.com/itm/15072602937...NX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649#ht_5696wt_984
looking to pull the trigger one one of these for my 24x24x20 high.
and how is the noise level on each of these ones?
thank you
Click to expand...

Looking at the ebay modle

Vender claims 30 Blue LED's for 63 Watts
this means each LED is running at 2.1 Watts each not 3 Watts.

Vender claims 25 Waites are running at 66 Watts
this means the whites are running at 2.64 each not 3 Watts.

There is no indication on what type of LED's they are other than them being 12K or 14K. That means your whiutes a very heavy in the blues and lacklng in the reds. Also the higher the K rating of whites the less total lumens you get per LED.

I would stay clear of that fixture even though the price seems sweet for that many LED's. Well below retail price on the parts to do a quality DIY fixture.

The AquariumLED 120 sounds like a much better deal with the bridglux LED's running a full 3 Watts each. However I personaly do not like the color mix and would prefer CREE LED's because of there higher effeciency.

Dennis
 
TropTrea said:
Cree does offer Red LED's. However there UV LED's 380 to 405 nm are only listed for medical usage. I had tried some Philips, near UV LED's 410 to 420 nm, 2 in an array of 24 and everyone asked me way was my tank to pink. I pulled them and replaced them with nuetral whites and the tank looks much better.

The Bridglux LED's however are rated at a max of 700ma compared to the Cree's. at 1,000ma plus. At 700ma and 3.7 volts (2.6 watts) the bridglux is slightly dimmer than Cree XP-G at 700 ma and 3.05 Volts (2.1 Watts) these LED's are now rated to run up to 1,500ma @ 3.25 Volts which is actualy 4.8 Watts.

While I know you custom configuer there drivers for these orders the Crees would still be the better deal for total light output. To mee the 100$ difference is well worth it to get the Crees. On a DIY build with 48 LED's the price difference between the Bridgelux and Crees is about $130.00. Actualy a DIY build with the Cree LED's would be in the $350.00 range, dependent on the drivers and heat sinks one used.

The big thing is to make sure they running the LED's at 2.5 Watts each or more. If they are this is great deal.
Click to expand...

I just received two units of Eshine 48x3W CREE w controllers and have been running them since 3/27/12. I replaced four of the CREE blue with red. CREE does come in red.

Today I put a Kil-a-watt meter to one of the lights and at 100% on for both white and blue, the meter registered 94 watts. So it is running at about 65% of stated max wattage or 1.95 watt per LED! Does it sound right?

Here are a couple links to my build thread where I commented about the lights.


http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=20068636&postcount=105

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=20068808&postcount=107
 
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