Hello,
Some of you may remember me. I' built my current system about 8.. maybe its been 10? years ago. I've cycled through all the lighting options (including LED from the major manufacturers) and have always come back to 400W MH (Radiums) for both look and ease of maintenance on my main display (120x36x30). I use 4 with high quality eballasts and reflectors. I supplement with VHO.
I've been far from thrilled with the commercial led fixtures out there. Most provide way too much low CRI white and not nearly enough blue. They miss important fluorescent spikes and the shadowing can be terrible.
I've been playing around with Led in my home shop. I'm at the point where I want to try and build either an all LED or a LED W/ T5. Here are the specs:
1) Each fixture needs to replace 1 of my 400W MHs. I want 4 fixtures to cover 120x36x30. I don't run sand, and I do keep sps at the bottom so it really needs to be 30". The tank is actually more like 34" so 30" is when the main circ is off. Wave makers move the average depth between 28" and 32" all day long. So each "unit" needs to throw 30x36x30. I'm not sure Led's can penetrate this far realistically and NOT discoball.
2) Mount the fixture 12" above water.
3) Minimum amount of shadows.
4) No disco.
5) As many fluorescent spikes covered as possible.
6) Thinking one remote power supply for the LED's not on fixture, the rest on fixture.
7) Full reflective color support. This means lime and reds.
8) Multiple channel control but don't want to go nuts. As many channels as needed for tweaking and no more.
9) Less wattage than the MH setup. This means I'd like to stay under 400watts when tuned (not max).
10) Heat sink(s) will more than likely be actively cooled. That kind of wattage on a passive sink would make the sink too big to be practical.
11) Ease of maintenance. That means I'd favor tight clusters with smaller splash shields over massive slabs of light.
So any ideas on what the led selection would look like? I plan to get feedback here then start building and tweaking. I'm not looking for someone to completely lay this fixture out, I'm willing to do that. I just need a solid place to start cluster wise with the highest end emitters. Hopefully be someone that's done a bit of this before. I don't want to re-invent the wheel if there is knowledge already out there.
Thanks!
Some of you may remember me. I' built my current system about 8.. maybe its been 10? years ago. I've cycled through all the lighting options (including LED from the major manufacturers) and have always come back to 400W MH (Radiums) for both look and ease of maintenance on my main display (120x36x30). I use 4 with high quality eballasts and reflectors. I supplement with VHO.
I've been far from thrilled with the commercial led fixtures out there. Most provide way too much low CRI white and not nearly enough blue. They miss important fluorescent spikes and the shadowing can be terrible.
I've been playing around with Led in my home shop. I'm at the point where I want to try and build either an all LED or a LED W/ T5. Here are the specs:
1) Each fixture needs to replace 1 of my 400W MHs. I want 4 fixtures to cover 120x36x30. I don't run sand, and I do keep sps at the bottom so it really needs to be 30". The tank is actually more like 34" so 30" is when the main circ is off. Wave makers move the average depth between 28" and 32" all day long. So each "unit" needs to throw 30x36x30. I'm not sure Led's can penetrate this far realistically and NOT discoball.
2) Mount the fixture 12" above water.
3) Minimum amount of shadows.
4) No disco.
5) As many fluorescent spikes covered as possible.
6) Thinking one remote power supply for the LED's not on fixture, the rest on fixture.
7) Full reflective color support. This means lime and reds.
8) Multiple channel control but don't want to go nuts. As many channels as needed for tweaking and no more.
9) Less wattage than the MH setup. This means I'd like to stay under 400watts when tuned (not max).
10) Heat sink(s) will more than likely be actively cooled. That kind of wattage on a passive sink would make the sink too big to be practical.
11) Ease of maintenance. That means I'd favor tight clusters with smaller splash shields over massive slabs of light.
So any ideas on what the led selection would look like? I plan to get feedback here then start building and tweaking. I'm not looking for someone to completely lay this fixture out, I'm willing to do that. I just need a solid place to start cluster wise with the highest end emitters. Hopefully be someone that's done a bit of this before. I don't want to re-invent the wheel if there is knowledge already out there.
Thanks!
