# LED lighting



## oyf709 (Sep 18, 2010)

I am rather new to fresh water, I just have a quick question regarding lighting, I am going to convert my 65g salt water to a fresh water plant. I am looking on ebay ( I am looking for some lighting system that doesn't have that much heat)
I found this 
900 LED AQUARIUM GROW LIGHT PANEL HYDROPONIC WHITE 110V on eBay.ca (item 140454654595 end time 21-Sep-10 18:45:18 EDT)

My question is will this be enough for my tank? when I combine all 4 of them? My tank is 36"x24"x ?" I forgot the exact measure.

this is 5600K white w/ 13.5x4=54.5W in total. so that means less than 1 WPG. 
As from wat I came from (saltwater) this is like almost not even close to the need for coral, but would this be enough for a beginer plant community tank?

Thanks in advance for the answer guys =)


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## effox (Apr 21, 2010)

Ron99 would be the best person to answer your question, he's quite experienced with LED's...


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## effox (Apr 21, 2010)

With LED's, one thing I do know is that wattage should just be used as a measurement of power consumption, and not light output. I had one 10w LED that could blind you it was so bright, far brighter than a 15w incandescent.


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## oyf709 (Sep 18, 2010)

ya that is wat I am not sure of, cuz I always want to go w/ LED for my saltwater, but it just cost way to much unless DIY, but even DIY could cost quite a lot when I alrdy spent like 3k on my Halide, another 2-3k on the LED is just going to kill me(or at least give my wife a good reason to do it herself =p) I was rather suprise this LED listed on ebay is rather cheap. I do understand for planted freshwater tank, pretty much any lighting would work as long as bright enough to promo growth of the plant. Cuz too bright can also cause the fish lose their cloration as well.


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## effox (Apr 21, 2010)

I've seen a DIY build on here for a couple hundred.

Here's the post: http://www.bcaquaria.com/forum/diy-area-18/diy-led-luminaire-mkii-4014/


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## oyf709 (Sep 18, 2010)

ok, I will look into it, I wish I can find a site explain a bit more on the LED light compare to other light sources especially how much W of LED is enough for a mid light requirement tank set up. All i kno is the less heat and the energy saving espect of the LED, but not so sure on the performance wise.


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## effox (Apr 21, 2010)

Here's a basic explanation that compares a couple of different light sources, and their respective luminosity:

Lumens Vs. Watts Output | eHow.com


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## EDGE (Aug 24, 2010)

wattage I am not sure of in comparison to fluorescent and or HID, I was looking at using LED as well.

The best way to tell if the LED is going to be good for plant growth is base on micromol and the combination of spectrum they give out. 

kelvin is not a good guideline for LED because kelvin is the general color the bulb and does say where the peaks in the spectrum are. With LED, you can get specific color spectrum to maximized the usage of wattage and have the best possible light for plant growth. i.e. If you have red diode, they give off 600 and a white diode gives off 500ish. 

Plant uses a lot of blue and red wavelength and very little yellow / green color. 

The problem with LED is that a lot of the cheaper lights only have 1 type to 2 type of color (wavelength) close to each other.

If LED has more than 2 color, they get really expensive as the hardware to operate multiple colors goes up quite a bit.

If I remember correctly, blue and white uses less wattage than red and orange diode. So the blue and white setup are usually cheaper in general.


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## effox (Apr 21, 2010)

The white lights also have a lot of blue spectrum in them. When I built my little bonsai grow box I went on ebay and verified the colour spectrum that was necessary, and found one that best matched them.

The link I provided that shows the construction of the LED overhead was created by a member of BCAquaria. Perhaps giving him a shout would be useful. His nick is "*supercoley1*".


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## Jonney_boy (Apr 28, 2010)

I've researched this a while back when considering converting my tank to led..... there are a few things to keep in mind.

LED pannels (those made with huge amounts of low power led's) don't work well for a fish tank setup. They just don't put out enough light and can't pentrate deep enough.

Smaller amount of high power led's with proper lenses work much better... such as a bank of Q5 cree's.... the R2-R4's are out now but i'm not sure how their output spectrum looks.

the wpg rule does not apply to led's..... 2wpg t8 does not equal 2wpg of led's.... U need to measure the par values in the tank..... 0.8 to 1wpg could likely support high light plants with co2.

high power led's (such as the cree Q5's) get expensive quick.... a 65g hood costs almost $250-300 in parts alone. You need buck pucks (drivers), ac/dc converters, the led's, heatsinks, and a way to mount them all. Not to mention they still run fairly warm (much cooler than metal halids tho).

LED's being a point source will give a nice shimmer effect to the tank... looks beaufiful.


**as a side note**.. don't use unknown led's.. haha.. I tried running 20w of cheap made in china unknown led's on my 20 gallon (20 1w led's bundled into 5w bulbes). while the tank was bright enough it just didn't have the correct spectrum for the plants. I ended up with algae soup.


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## supercoley1 (Jul 14, 2010)

http://www.bcaquaria.com/forum/diy-area-18/diy-led-luminaire-mkii-4014/

The poster above is right. normal LEDs are only any good as 'effect' lighting. moonlights or balancing the colouration of the 'actual' light etc.

If you want to go for LED as the main lighting you need high power ones.

As for the WPG comparisons it is fair to say that even for flouro lighting we are starting to gauge a pattern that WPG is absolutely pish. A basic basic guideline at best nowadays. There is however no alternative.

As for LED vs the WPG rule

If we say the rule is based on T12s then we can (very basic with no accuracy) say T8 = 1.1x, T5 = 1.2x, T5HO = 1.5x

LEDs are going to work out somewhere in the region of 3 - 4x!!!!

That is based on PAR and not watts. ignore Lumens because LED are actually lower Lumens per watt but much much higher actual light.

So if 30W of T12 over a 30USG tank is low light, 30W of LED is gonna be medium to high to very high light without being 'uber' blinding bright.

However you talk about heat being a problem. high power LEDs do get pretty hot. Imagine putting that much power (3W as an example) into a light that is 2-3mm square and paper thin!!! We use heatsinks that are 1½ inch sqaure to take the heat away from them.



> **as a side note**.. don't use unknown led's.. haha.. I tried running 20w of cheap made in china unknown led's on my 20 gallon (20 1w led's bundled into 5w bulbes). while the tank was bright enough it just didn't have the correct spectrum for the plants. I ended up with algae soup.


Mine are 'cheap made in china unknown  The water is, well.........somewhat 'un' green :









Don't worry about colouration too much on any kind of lighting. Plants aren't bothered if the light is pink, white or green so long as it isn't blue. Somewhere between 3000 and 8000 is fine.

The reason for green water under LEDs is purely that the user underestimates just how much light is being put out. unlike other forms of lighting like MH and flouro the LED pushes out near 99% usable light. the other push out some UV and other light that is unusable by life, in fact in high quantities deadly. Nothing to worry about as the other forms of lighting aren't pushing out vast quantities, just not giving out all their light within the usable area.

A little like going from 2 tubes to 8 tubes without upping CO2, nutrient and circulation accordingly.

AC


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