LED's with respect to color of Sps corals

[Big E]

I think that's a fair critique Joe........there are still hundreds of people putting one of those rectangular/square boxes over their tanks and expecting them to cover a 24x24 area with expectations that aren't realistic.

LED manufacturers are still focused on selling how good the par is on their units. There is no focus to buliding the units to diffuse the beams with a difffuser plate or making brackets, ect. to be able to angle the units. I think Mazerra is the only one that does that.

The article did enough for Ryan to think about how he wants to set up his lights. Even if the info is nothing new it spurs one to think about how to get better results from what they're using.

From the article first few paragraphs---

"So, In the case of this article, I will leave the decision of its worth or validity entirely up to you the reader. You can take it or leave it dependent on what you consider worthwhile information to you. Hopefully by the time you finish reading, a lot of what I say will make sense and connect a few missing dots as it were in your understanding of the subject matter. If that is the case, then I have done my job, so please feel free to pass it on if you think it will help others."

 

[ghostman]

I have no new information to contribute, but wanted to say this is a great thread that truly addresses some of the misconceptions about led lighting. Thanks to Ed, Joe, Przemek, and all those contributing good information. I'm so tired of the "which fixture is better" threads. This thread has inspired me to make subtle changes in my lighting that will hopefully have positive results. Thanks again!!!!

 

[zachts]

LED manufacturers are still focused on selling how good the par is on their units. There is no focus to buliding the units to diffuse the beams with a difffuser plate or making brackets, ect. to be able to angle the units. I think Mazerra is the only one that does that.

I can think of one that does focus on diffusion and light blending. BuildmyLEDs.com Packs 60 leds into a 4' light bar no bigger than a T12 tube. Definitely a different approach than other LED manufacturers, one of the best I've used for combining and mixing multiple color of LEDs into a fairly uniform light. They also have angle-able tank mounts. They have no bells or whistles and dim all as one light though. (they supposedly have a 3 channel model in the works)

 

[TropTrea]

I can think of one that does focus on diffusion and light blending. BuildmyLEDs.com Packs 60 leds into a 4' light bar no bigger than a T12 tube. Definitely a different approach than other LED manufacturers, one of the best I've used for combining and mixing multiple color of LEDs into a fairly uniform light. They also have angle-able tank mounts. They have no bells or whistles and dim all as one light though. (they supposedly have a 3 channel model in the works)

Yes there are some nice things about BML. However they are running roughly 1.25 Watts per LED With a 48 inch strip that is about 75 watts. An advantage over T-5 lighting as they are more efficient and you will require probably only need 4 strips for a typical 120 gallon thank. This should give you a little more light than a 8 bulb T-5 fixture.

As I would build it it would cost $269 per strip or $1076 plus shipping and handling. On the DIY level you could cut that cost in at least half.

Then I worry about that much power in the single LED strip and wonder about there cooling. A 75 watt LED strip I would want to have at least 300 square inches of cooling space with out fans. That means a cross section of roughly 6.25 inches of surface area exposed to free air.

 

[zachts]

Yes there are some nice things about BML. However they are running roughly 1.25 Watts per LED With a 48 inch strip that is about 75 watts. An advantage over T-5 lighting as they are more efficient and you will require probably only need 4 strips for a typical 120 gallon thank. This should give you a little more light than a 8 bulb T-5 fixture.

As I would build it it would cost $269 per strip or $1076 plus shipping and handling. On the DIY level you could cut that cost in at least half.

Then I worry about that much power in the single LED strip and wonder about there cooling. A 75 watt LED strip I would want to have at least 300 square inches of cooling space with out fans. That means a cross section of roughly 6.25 inches of surface area exposed to free air.

Cooling is not an issue, they are running at very low mA per LED thus very little heat. they are barely above room temp to the touch at full power after 8 hours in free air, don't forget Luxeon LEDs can tollerate over 200 F and be fine.

You could DIY the same power for less, sure, I do all the time. but you'd not be able to buy 60 LEDs for a 4' DIY for the same cost plus drivers and heat sinks. the trade off is more leds equals better blending of colors for the trade off of individual LED output. LEDs run more efficent anyway the lower mA you run thru them.

Maxing them out is really only a concern if you a DIY'er on a budget or looking to make a killing on a comercial fixture by saving on a the LED cost (manufacturers only pay a dollar or less per chip)

60 Royal blue Luxeons would cost a DIYer at least $180 plus drivers, optics, and heatsink, enclosure, mounting, etc. throw in other colors and the cost goes up from there.

So BML fixtures are not a bad value for what they are designed to do, blend light and evenly distribute it over the length of the tank.

I don't mean to say they are the be all end all of LEDs but they are a heck of an improvement over what most of the manufacturers are making.

More LEDs over a larger area at lower power equates to fewer hot spots and less shadowing and issues with color banding/disco and all the other issues many LED fixtures have.

BML is still limited to the LED spectrums available for creating a fixture, and since you can't individually dim each color (yet) it limits them to some degree. But they are on the right track for sure. Not to mention you can custom tailor them to suit your needs and fill in spectrums you may be missing on some other LED fixture you are using as main lightning, etc....

 

[zachts]

Then I worry about that much power in the single LED strip and wonder about there cooling. A 75 watt LED strip I would want to have at least 300 square inches of cooling space with out fans. That means a cross section of roughly 6.25 inches of surface area exposed to free air.

I just have to reiterate this part. Your thinking about typical cree and luxeon leds running at 700mA to 1.5amps or otherwise at thier maximum rated current. BML runs them at or under around 350mA. At that current a typical star mounted cree or luxeon LED can run without heatsink for quite an extended time in free air and never come close to exceeding it's maximum rated junction temp.

 

[TropTrea]

I just have to reiterate this part. Your thinking about typical cree and luxeon leds running at 700mA to 1.5amps or otherwise at thier maximum rated current. BML runs them at or under around 350mA. At that current a typical star mounted cree or luxeon LED can run without heatsink for quite an extended time in free air and never come close to exceeding it's maximum rated junction temp.

I have run some Cree chips at 350 ma and they did generate heat. I'm not sure if would have been enough to cause them to burn out or not. I did have them on Aluminum rails spaced about 3" apart which did get slightly warm. But not nearly as warm as when I ran them at 1040 ma.

I will say that is a an effeciency difference with running them at lower power. The numbers may be in Lumns but I have seen where where running at 350 ma is the most effecient at 129 lumns per watt and cranking up to 1500ma it drops to about 108 lumns per watt.

The draw back though to get the same amount of light from one LED running at 1500ma = 540 Lumns and to get that at 350 ma you would need slightly over 4 LED's. Therefor cost to build the fixture goes up considerably in exchange for only using 84% of the electricity you would use with running them at 1,500ma.

Another thing to keep in mind that Crees UV range offerings are extremely limited. The frequently used LED chips have a max rating of 700ma. from most vendors and I have some some even rated at a max of 500 ma.

 

[sahin]

I have run some Cree chips at 350 ma and they did generate heat. I'm not sure if would have been enough to cause them to burn out or not. I did have them on Aluminum rails spaced about 3" apart which did get slightly warm. But not nearly as warm as when I ran them at 1040 ma.

I will say that is a an effeciency difference with running them at lower power. The numbers may be in Lumns but I have seen where where running at 350 ma is the most effecient at 129 lumns per watt and cranking up to 1500ma it drops to about 108 lumns per watt.

The draw back though to get the same amount of light from one LED running at 1500ma = 540 Lumns and to get that at 350 ma you would need slightly over 4 LED's. Therefor cost to build the fixture goes up considerably in exchange for only using 84% of the electricity you would use with running them at 1,500ma.

Another thing to keep in mind that Crees UV range offerings are extremely limited. The frequently used LED chips have a max rating of 700ma. from most vendors and I have some some even rated at a max of 500 ma.

+1

Even at 350mA, those diodes will produce a lot of heat. Not as much as running at 700mA, but a fair bit still.

My last T5/LED project involved running the LED's at 700mA and the heatsink would get very hot. I then ran the same fixture at 350mA, and although I turned the fan speed down, the heatsink still got fairly hot.

Unfortunately I didnt have a temperature gun so I cannot provide any figures.

 

[zachts]

Next time I'm tinkering I'll measure that star at 350mA, It was hot, but I'd hazard a guess not over 150, as it didn't leave a burn mark when I touched it, LOL!

I have two of the 4' BML fixtures and at full power they only get warm, I've not measured the temp but under 100 degrees as at around 105 F (measured on previous DIY builds) I can't hold onto a heat sink for more than a few seconds.

On another example I have an old DIY that I used 24 ebay specials (probably epiled or something else equally cheap) running on a 4' 3/4" by 1/16" thick C channel from the hard ware store. At 350mA the heatsink tops out at right around 100 degrees with an ambient of 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

Heat is relative, most of the Cree and Luxeon chips and even the better quality Semi chips have max junction temp ratings of around 150 Celsius.

So any design that does not badly burn you will have absolutely no issues with life span of the LEDs due to heat.

 

[zachts]

Here is a good example of the significantly higher heat tolerance from running LEDs at lower drive current. This is a reflection of the internal heat generated by the chips durring operation at different drive current.

 

[TropTrea]

Next time I'm tinkering I'll measure that star at 350mA, It was hot, but I'd hazard a guess not over 150, as it didn't leave a burn mark when I touched it, LOL!

I have two of the 4' BML fixtures and at full power they only get warm, I've not measured the temp but under 100 degrees as at around 105 F (measured on previous DIY builds) I can't hold onto a heat sink for more than a few seconds.

On another example I have an old DIY that I used 24 ebay specials (probably epiled or something else equally cheap) running on a 4' 3/4" by 1/16" thick C channel from the hard ware store. At 350mA the heatsink tops out at right around 100 degrees with an ambient of 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

Heat is relative, most of the Cree and Luxeon chips and even the better quality Semi chips have max junction temp ratings of around 150 Celsius.

So any design that does not badly burn you will have absolutely no issues with life span of the LEDs due to heat.

An interesting thing using mainly Cree LED's. I had built a fixture that had used exclusively 2" X 1" Channel Aluminum On one of the rails I was using 430 nm no name LED's in a mixture with 454 nm Cree LED's. Since I had prior issues with these 430nm LED's I ran them only at 350ma. With a spacing of 3" between LED's ( 6 430's and 10 454's on the 48" rail) The rail was barely warm to the touch after running 8 hours without fans.

On another Rail I was running Cree Neutral Whites and Royal Blues 6 of each with 4" spacing. Again I did not run any cooling fans and ran these LED's at 1400ma which comes out around 4.5 Watts per LED. The rails did get warm but I could hold my hand on them for 5 minutes without any fear of burning my hands. I would estimate they were in the range of 120 degrees F while your looking at a C temp scale this is no place near the 100C range. I also touched the LED's directly and yes they were hot but again I was able to hold my finger directly on them long enough that if they were over 100C I would gotten a burn but did not even get close to that level.

Cree also has the 3000ma series of single emiter LED's that suposedly run at 10 Watts. I have not tried those over 1400ma but will say running them att 1400ma I detect no difference between them and the LED's they rate at 1500ma or 5 Watts. I would suspect these do run considerably hotter though at 3000ma.

Now my Rails are in open Air. If we start enclosing the LED's the natural air flow and convection will be diminished. So in commercial fixtures running at these levels would probably require some forced air cooling.

The big benefit of running at lower wattage though I see is that they are more efficient. If you have a 75 Watt fixture with 60 LED's averaging 1.25 Watts each with the same LED's running at 4.5Watts each it would take 20 LED's to match the light output meaning your running 90 Watts. So the difference being would you rather invest in more LED's at higher initial cost, or save roughly 15% on the electrical bill over the lifespan of the fixture.

 

[zachts]

The other huge benifit to having 60 emitters over 4' is that the ability to blend multiple colors and create even light distribution much more similar to flourescent is possible this way. If only comparing single color fixtures or basic RB and White fixtures not much diference in effective light delivery, but if you throw in a few more colors to do a "full spectrum" bar then having 60 leds becomes a huge benifit. my two BML strips incorporate 8 different wavelelnths and there is minimal color banding from this light.

 

[TropTrea]

The other huge benifit to having 60 emitters over 4' is that the ability to blend multiple colors and create even light distribution much more similar to flourescent is possible this way. If only comparing single color fixtures or basic RB and White fixtures not much diference in effective light delivery, but if you throw in a few more colors to do a "full spectrum" bar then having 60 leds becomes a huge benifit. my two BML strips incorporate 8 different wavelelnths and there is minimal color banding from this light.

Yes I will agree here on the color blending. However with the 48" long BML fixture your talking about 60 leds running at a total of 75 Watts.. If we look at a 48" long tank your talking a minimum of a 50 gallon thank which would require two of these fixtures for 120 LED's. If you had a 75 Gallon tank were talking 2 or preferably 3 of these fixtures for 120 to 180 LED's. With a 120 gallon tank your looking at 4 of these fixtures for a total of 240 LED's.

I have found that with a 6" spread between LED's there is no visible shadowing and if your not using lenses you can go with even a 12" spread without shadowing. That would mean you can avoid the shadowing with just 8 of the least used LED's on a 120 Gallon tank. You also have the options of running 8 channels with one color on each channel and having 8 LED's on each. For a total of 64 LED's instead of 240 LED's. Each channel can run at a different current so your near UV may run at 700ma for 16 watts total, your Royal Blues at run at 1,500ma for 40 Watts, and your whites may run at 3,000 ma for 80 watts total. Dependent on your preferred color balance you could have more than 64 LED';s on a particular Channel but your chip count and cost can still be reduced compared to having 240 LED's and still not have shadowing. Note 64 LED's even all running at 700 ma would give you at least 140 watts of light close to two of the BML strips.

For a commercial fixture I cannot argue against these. But with what your DIY I think there is no comparison yet. Especial with the fact that on a 120 gallon tank you need at least 4 at a cost of $269 each for a total of $1,076 plus shipping and handling. With DIY you can build a super light fixture for half of that.

 

[zachts]

I have found that with a 6" spread between LED's there is no visible shadowing and if your not using lenses you can go with even a 12" spread without shadowing. That would mean you can avoid the shadowing with just 8 of the least used LED's on a 120 Gallon tank. You also have the options of running 8 channels with one color on each channel and having 8 LED's on each.

I have to completely disagree on this, have you seen my build thread? anything more than RB and a single White LED in an every other configuration creates disco banding with every light I've DIY'd or seen (even most commercial units, save for BML and anything running tight matrix clusters or multi chips)

For a commercial fixture I cannot argue against these. But with what your DIY I think there is no comparison yet. Especial with the fact that on a 120 gallon tank you need at least 4 at a cost of $269 each for a total of $1,076 plus shipping and handling. With DIY you can build a super light fixture for half of that.

Aggreed, you can DIY a very powerfull light nearly equivalvent to an all BML setup, for half the price if not less. I've done many such comparisons when weighing whether to buy or build, but getting reds, greens, cyans, etc, to blend well on most DIYs is not so simple.

I do actually really look forward to BML's 3 channel model that should be out sometime this year. In some applications made to order commercal lights are just better than a DIY. I've never managed anything close to IP66 on one of my builds, heck most of them have no rating for dust and moisture, save for the splash gaurd so maybe a rating of IP11? (I forget what the lower end of the scale equates to) and while I can build a strip light that is thinner if I were to drop it it would most likely be broken or badly damaged (been there done that, clumbsy fingers get expensive when you drop a strip of XPG face down on concrete) The BML design is quite durable with the chips safely in the center of the unit protected from moderate shock and most damage that would incur from clumsy handling.

If cost is the main factor then DIY or look at Reef Breeders or Ocean Revive, etc.
These BML strips win out hands down though for looks, they are very sexy!

 

[ReefLed2014]

great sharing,thank you

 

[JPMagyar]

I totally agree on the "Disco Blending". The Pac Sun fixtures I have allow one to build a PAR table to control the LEDs minute by minute. The first thing I did when I got these lights was to turn off all but blue when the T5s switch off otherwise the red, green, and amber bands of shimmer cause enormous "Disco Blending". It's a real problem for LEDs and not just in how it looks because the same effect we observe with our eyes must have some impact on the evenness or lack there of for LEDs. To me it's evident that LEDs are just too focused to be useful without major work to "blend" the light both in distribution and mixing of wavelengths to reach all parts of the tank equally.

 

[zachts]

I totally agree on the "Disco Blending". The Pac Sun fixtures I have allow one to build a PAR table to control the LEDs minute by minute. The first thing I did when I got these lights was to turn off all but blue when the T5s switch off otherwise the red, green, and amber bands of shimmer cause enormous "Disco Blending". It's a real problem for LEDs and not just in how it looks because the same effect we observe with our eyes must have some impact on the evenness or lack there of for LEDs. To me it's evident that LEDs are just too focused to be useful without major work to "blend" the light both in distribution and mixing of wavelengths to reach all parts of the tank equally.

Guessing you have the earlier models with LEDs spaced out, not the S series that has a very tight cluster of LEDs with a diffusing plate over that?

 

[TropTrea]

Okay lets look at the BML fixture which you claim has 8 different color LED's. The fixture is 48" long with 60 LED. That puts a spacing of 0.8" between LED's. With 8 different colors it means that that soonest a color could repeat itself is every 6.4" Chances are you are not using at least 7 of each lead in each 48" strip. I would guess some you are using more Royal Blues than anything which leans your using less of some of the other colors.

If your color selection is like mine would would be. I would not use that many different colors. But the least frequent color I would use would be maybe one red for every strip if 15 that would mean I had one red every 24". Or perhaps you would use the lower K rated White(to avoid using reds) at perhaps 2 for every 15" strip meaning you had one every 12" inches. But you claim that would cause banding since my claim that you do not see banding at a 12" spread is false.

Now when your using lenses especially the narrow angled lenses than I would have to agree with you more. The narrower the lens angle is the closer you need to put the LED's of the same color to get an even spread.

 

[Fredfish]

I have to completely disagree on this, have you seen my build thread? anything more than RB and a single White LED in an every other configuration creates disco banding with every light I've DIY'd or seen (even most commercial units, save for BML and anything running tight matrix clusters or multi chips)...

Can you clarify this a little? How tight a cluster are you talking about before the disco effect completely dissapears? Do clusters made with single emitter chips still disco? Do clusters made with 3 up emitters disco? Does it have to get as tight as what we see in lights like the EcoTech Radion?

I'd hate to spend a bunch of money on single and 3 up chip clusters only to turn them on and have a flashback to the '70s. :lol:

 

[rtparty]

When I ran a Radion, there was still a very clear disco effect. A LFS by me has the new models up and the disco is still present.

I've never seen an LED setup not have a disco effect somewhere in the tank. Although, I haven't seen Kessil and they supposedly don't. Which makes sense to me.