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Re: [APD] re light fixture



On Wed, 25 Jan 2012, Jerry Baker wrote:

On 1/25/2012 9:25 AM, RMGTBTS at aol_com wrote:
but I cant wait to hear about the LED's and their ratings as to life of
unit and plant growth.

Some of Cree's new LED emitters have efficiencies over 100 lumens per watt and emit fairly strongly in the blue portion of the spectrum, which is good for plants. They even come in high-CRI color bins which means the fish and plants will show off their true colors. The expense isn't too bad when you consider that these LEDs should have a useful life of over 10 years on a 12-hour cycle. You could achieve the same lighting levels as an AH Supply 55W kit using only 45 watts or so. The issue seems to be that nobody is really manufacturing aquarium lights using these emitters yet.

I'm building an 8emitter setup of Cree XM-L's for a 95-gallon Tanganyika tank. Trying to dream up a way to cool it with tank water by passing tubing up from the tank and across the top of an aluminum channel or inside an aluminum tube & running a circulation pump. The hangup is finding a tubing material that doesn't insulate too much yet is also inert & won't leach into the tank. For instance, copper? I don't think so. Maybe a thin-wall vinyl tube against the channel?

Anyway, it's a bit of a fun experiment. I may abandon the water cooling entirely. Planning to run it at 1.7 amps = 40 watts total, which should be great for a non-planted aquarium. But because the XM-L's can be pushed to 3+ amps, one could imagine doubling the power on this little rig and getting enough lighting for a medium-level 55 or a high-light 29. But expensive. Think $200 just for all the parts.

  - Erik

--
Erik Olson
Sent from my spiffy new Linux box

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