NEW marineland led lighting!!!

Bluephish13

Bluephish13

New member
I did not want to post a link to another reefing site, but google it and you will prob get to the 3reef.com site.

WOW they are very affordable.

Might be nice for a frag tank. I wonder how well they can grow corals?

99$ - 18"-24" fixture
149$- 24"-36" fixture
199$ - 48" fixture.



Also that new fluval digital heater looks to be pretty nice, with +/- .5 accuracy( only the jager heaters have i seen boast +/- .5 accuracy) and it has a digital temp set, with auto saftey shut off. google that one too!!
 
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Marineland doesn't have them on their site. I can't find anything on them.
 
The only place i find them is on 3reef.com on the front home page, they must have an exclusive news breaker deal.

Only reason i found them was i used to be a avid member of 3reef be for i found URS.

There are a few buffalo /roch. people on that site that still i do not think know URS exists.
 
As far as I know, the 1 watt LED's are not near powerful enough to do what we would want them to. I don't know anything about par/lumen output required but from everything I've seen, the 1 watts are just not powerful enough.
 
I don't think that would be where you'd want to skimp. I would think most people would want their frag tank to function as a growout tank as well. It might be good for a Fish and Softies only tank but for what you'd end up paying, you might as well get something else or DIY an LED array.
 
IMHO the big advantages of LEDs can all be thrown away if the fixture isn't designed well:

1) Efficiency. The difference in light output per watt between a high-binned Cree XR-E (the standard "3 watt" LED) and a low binned XR-E can be 50%. The difference between the worst XR-E and the best of some other 3w LEDs can be 100% or more. So, if all we know is that it's a "1 watt" LED, we really don't know much about output. Plus, referring to an LED by it's wattage is not the same thing as referring to an MH lamp by wattage. An MH lamp is built for a specific wattage, and that's basically all it'll run at. An LED is tested at a specific wattage but might often be used in fixtures at other wattages. Hence I really hope the hobby doesn't get in to the habit of labeling LEDs as "1 watt" or "3 watt" since I'm willing to bet that many fixtures using "1 watt" LEDs are built with LEDs that might be used at 3 watts elsewhere.

Oh, and another thought - knowing what the "best" LEDs sell at even in wholesale quantities of 1,000+, I doubt they're using "the best" LEDs in those fixtures, or else their profit margins would be TINY or negative!

2) Controllability. Those don't appear to have anything but an on/off switch. It's so easy to get all sorts of cool effects with LEDs (fading, changing color, changing intensity) that it seems like a waste to build a fixture without those features.

Plus, by knowing the wattage they're listing (1w whites and .6w blue) and counting the emitters on their fixtures, they are in the neighborhood of half or a quarter of the output most DIY fixtures have, if you assume the same output/watt numbers.

What it really boils down to, for me at least, is that if you're not doing the best job possible at an LED fixture, you might as well not do it. If you're not using the highest efficiency LEDs, and taking advantage of controllability, etc., you're not going to get as much of a performance/cost benefit or heat/output benefit compared to other technologies, so you might as well use MH or HO T5.

All that said I hate to be a cranky bastard, and those fixtures are promising - even if just as a first example of affordable LEDs for mainstream use.
 
It appears that the 48" fixture has 16 white LEDs and 8 blues. If it's $199, that's around $8 per LED for a finished product. FWIW, other LED vendors are around $20/LED (AI, etc.) and DIY typically ranges $8 - $10. If they're using the same spec of LEDs as good DIY and other good pro fixtures, that's a pretty slim profit margin. If they're using cheaper, lower efficiency units, then it's more believable.

Still, that's only 28.8 watts for the 48" fixture. Even with the best LEDs, that's gonna be pretty wimpy on a 48" tank. For reference, Soundwave's original LED build (the one that started all the DIY craze on here in the spring) is more like 150w, and it's on the "wimpy" end of the spectrum these days.

If they'd take the number of LEDs in the 48" fixture and cram them in to the 24" fixture they might be on to something. :D As it is, I'd think you'd need more than one of these units over a tank to have a reasonable shot at a typical mixed reef.
 
FWIW I spoke with someone at macna about these. i was told they were intended for FO tanks, or FOWLR tanks. not reef tanks...

then again... i bet mushrooms and such could survive under these lights.
 
Probably. And it would be a neat, low-cost way to get a cool shimmer effect on low light tanks without dealing with MH.

And, no bulb replacement costs ever!
 
I was wondering if two of these 36-48" fixtures would work for a 135g? (3W x 3L x 2H)
 
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