Heyoo Soul, Do you think one unit can cover 800x500x500mm tank? because I want order from Brian too . Btw, my orientation is LPS .
thanks in advance.
Chinese LED Lights
- Thread starter cmac23
- Start date
Heyoo Soul, Do you think one unit can cover 800x500x500mm tank? because I want order from Brian too . Btw, my orientation is LPS .
thanks in advance.
MrineLfRlz
Active member
Why cant i post a pic its no different then any of these other pics of diy layouts i would like some feed back from other people too?
I tried posting the pic again and it will not post at all now can someone please explain why mine is wrong? Mods please?
I tried posting the pic again and it will not post at all now can someone please explain why mine is wrong? Mods please?
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tennisstudrogie
New member
I just cut the upright to size with a hacksaw. It allows a d120 to be adjustable in hanging height, which is no longer required with the new light, as they have adjustable hanging kits.
Bhazard - If I'm running 2 D120's, should I use two of setups? Or try to share both on 1 cantilever clip in the middle? THanks!
livingseas
New member
So I worked with 80/20 to get a rack designed up for my tank to
hold my 6 lights. The lights will hang underneath, mounted by bolts
and the rack will be raised or lowered by the 4 points in the corners.
Wasn't cheap .. $380 but I spent $1800 on lights so, what the heck.
I'm waiting for 8020 to ship it. Hopefully next week. I'll post up some
pics once its built and mounted to the ceiling.
Attachments
livingseas
New member
Cool.. I was thinking about wood. but I was concerned about the wood bowing over 6 ft and I wanted it to look a little less home made (going to be exposed). I'd love to see some pics of your's through. Does it raise up/down?
psusocr
Active member
Mine raises up/down with me simply adjusting the chain height. If i wanted to i would just have to connect the light rack to a pully system for automatic raising/lowering but i really dont mess with the height of my lights all that much, so i decided it wasnt really necassary( although cool).
If you scroll back a few pages you can see them hung on the rack but the lights were on so i dont think you can see the system all that well. Ill try to take more pics when they are off if people are interested.
The way i braced mine im not concerened about the wood bowing, but i agree if it was an exposed rack i do like the Aluminum racks..
MrineLfRlz
Active member
What does everyone think of this diy idea and how it might look for me?Well i just want to say this is a great thread and thanks mods for bringing it back it took awhile to catch up to all this but i did and came up with a diy idea what do you all think?
I really like the 14k look with great growth for sps,lps and zoas but still want all the pop! i can get!
oops i just noticed the g is for green i got 10-14k crazy
Im looking at getting 2 for my 75g.
Diesel3443
AEFW Distructor
New to LEDs. Great thread with a lot of great info. I am currently in the process of setting up my 150g 72"x18"x28." Is it possible to get away with 2 of the d120s with for now? Reef will be LPS dominated to start. Thanks
soul4surfin
New member
I saw somewhere where they gave you an idea of how many units would be sufficient for varying sizes of tanks, but I cannot remember where that was. I have a 90 gallon 48 inches by 18 inches by 23 or 22...can't remember, and I want to purchase two. HTH
Between the old and the new there are TONS of pages of good and not so good info to go through, been through a lot of it but I am having LED overload...not to mention this is not the only site that I have been reading info from.
So my thought is to put LEDs in my not yet build (see other threads) tank. Since I have kids (and I have seem what has happened in the past to freshwater tanks that I have had close to his level) I am going to build a hood/canopy for my tank. My tank will be fish only until I have what I feel is enough saltwater experience to be able to put corals and other cool things in it, so I want to only put together lighting ONCE...so I want to do it right, but at the right price too.
Pretty sold on DIY Bridgelux....anyone able to talk me out of it?
So my thought is to put LEDs in my not yet build (see other threads) tank. Since I have kids (and I have seem what has happened in the past to freshwater tanks that I have had close to his level) I am going to build a hood/canopy for my tank. My tank will be fish only until I have what I feel is enough saltwater experience to be able to put corals and other cool things in it, so I want to only put together lighting ONCE...so I want to do it right, but at the right price too.
Pretty sold on DIY Bridgelux....anyone able to talk me out of it?
bhazard451
New member
As long as you cover all the spectrum peaks with a good combo of leds, DIY Bridgelux is a great way to go.
If you don't want fancy features like automatic sunrise/sunset, it actually might be cheaper and easier to get one of the chinese boxes over DIY. Price it out and see.... the DIY drivers add up expense quickly.
With the help of djmatteo I was able to purchase the same one as he did.
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/643217953/DIY_LED_Aquarium_Light_with_moonlights.html
Brian Sun (customer rep) was very helpful...
Here's are the pictures of the LED and some random picture of my corals...
http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m253/keviniscool32/2012-09-
24123725.jpg
**PS** Sorry for the tooth brush on the left, I was cleaning my tank and had a chance to took some pictures. lol **
Over I'm satisfied with the product. My tank is a 40gallon breeder with built in overflow box. 36 inches long. Since I went with only one LED fixture I got the 120 degree angle. I believe anything longer than 36inch would require 2 LED fixture to have good lighting. I switch from T5 to LED due to the energy efficient. Another reason is less bulbs to change. This fixture is dimmable with moonlight build in.
I went with
24 Royal blues, 4 Violets
23 Cool Whites, 2x REd, 2x UV
Looks great Kevin, glad you like them!! Just for my own reference since I get a lot of questions asked, with the 120 degree do you get full tank coverage or do you have a few areas on the edges that dont quite get hit by the light?
Diesel3443
AEFW Distructor
Kevin32, do you have any pics with it on fully? I am curious to the spread as well as I am thinking to test my luck with 2 to start over my 72" tank. Thanks
Just a follow up, its not been quite some time since the launch of these lights so I will update with thoughts and impressions.
My tank is and has been a mixed reef LPS/SPS dominant.
Growth:
While it can be very hard to monitor growth on corals unless they are small frags growing new heads I wont make a blanket statement that says everything is ok. Instead I will tell you what I KNOW is doing good.
*Acans-Regained color loss from previous burning and maintaining it. Colors are sharp and vivid, polyps always open. Growth rate is phenomenal.
*Meat Coral-Color regained from prior bleaching
*Duncans-Several new heads, polyps always open.
*ORA Fuzzy Green Birds Nest-This thing has never been fuzzier and I swear I can see noticeable growth almost daily. I recently added a tri color acro and a long branch on the birds nest just keeps getting closer and closer, its almost touching it now.
*Orange monti digi-Has been in my tank for over a year slowly encrusting, since addition of new lights the calcium growth at the edges is thicker and its finally starting to sprout branches.
*ORA Bretts Monti-I got the frag with color loss, within 2-3 weeks the color is coming back, first the brownish hue appeared and now im seeing a nice green showing up.
*Fungia colony-These were a very blah green initially now their color has brightened up to a much more fluorescent green, much more reactive to blue lights now.
*Favia-One of my frags that was healthy going into the new lights is doing good, at least a couple new heads. Polyps always are out. My paintball favia that I bleached is extending polyps more and is still very healthy but has not regained its color.
*ATL Danae-I almost killed this, but I left it in my tank on the sand bed and its growing back. It now went from a spec smaller than a pencil eraser to about 3 times in size... slowly but surely.
*Green monti digi-Since I accidentally fragged this removing an anemone its hard to gauge it, but I did notice the white tips are growing in wider and thicker. Slightly fuzzier in appearance now.
*Pavona cactus coral-I have not noticed upward growth on this frag yet but its got the rock pretty well encrusted now, the little eyes that go around the base took on a nice green color in a very nice circular formation.
The above corals all are thriving and doing very well in my system.
I have a host of soft corals that are doing well, only one zoa frag is giving me issues and my giant green clove polyps still wont open. I have always had issues with these cloves however. I also have a candy cane with about 10 heads and 3 are suffering/dying/bleaching. The bleaching originally occured with to high of placement with my cree LED. I can never get them to feed so this is still a struggle, lights arent miraculously fixing this one.
Apperance
I am still very pleased with how smooth the color blends and have gotten over the feel of the dimmers. I can walk up to my lights and know where I need to turn them to get the color I feel like having so the extra responsiveness I feel it lacks on the top end really doesnt bother me anymore.
Suggestions
After I ordered I read many comments about UV not being as useful as many people stated. That being said I would alter the UV configuration if I did it again, I would do one of the following:
4 blue
2 blue 2 uv
2 UV 2 red
2 blue 2 red
I believe the extra blue would take a smidge of the edge off if you want to run the whites at a higher %.
Summary
I am still very pleased and would recommend them. The coral growth is sustaining in all cased and in others their is clear signs of improvement. I feel the product is well assembled and met all my expectations.
I read through most of the old locked thread as well as this one.
I'm thinking about this model: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290764118956&ssPageName=ADME:X:RTQ:US:1123
Is there anyone out there that knows if something like this can be hacked to run on a DIM4?
For those of you who have UV in your lights, what's the function? Is algae a problem?
Is there a better option out there than the one I'm looking at?
I'm thinking about this model: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290764118956&ssPageName=ADME:X:RTQ:US:1123
Is there anyone out there that knows if something like this can be hacked to run on a DIM4?
For those of you who have UV in your lights, what's the function? Is algae a problem?
Is there a better option out there than the one I'm looking at?
My advice is to get 3 and do 90 degree optics, he has soft corals/mushrooms and was willing to take a little risk on the coverage spread.
72" is a lot of tank to cover with only 2 lights and with braces on the tank ect I dont think you will get coverage you will be happy with.
Here is a FTS of mine with 3 lights on it.
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