Halide to LED swap

[bcollett]

I bought an Odyssea Lighting fixture early this year and its done pretty well for me. Its the 2x250w Halides with 4x65w PC's. My corals love it. For the money its been a really good fixture with pretty much no troubles. One problem is that it runs really really warm, and it increases my aquarium temp. I've been looking in to the LED fixtures available now and i've been considering a swap. Not only are they MUCH more energy efficient which would be nice, but they dont create nearly as much heat as the halide fixtures do. One of my concerns is the rating though. Most of the LED lights i've found say they're equal to a 175w Halide bulb. Since i'm currently running 250w halide bulbs, how negative might the affect be on my corals and clam? Would this be a smart swap? Also, does anyone knoww what the color temp is of the LED lights on the market? I haven't seen it published. My Halide bulbs are 15k bulbs.

 

[scsinet]

One word of caution is that depending on the manufacturer of the LED system, you need to be VERY careful to watch out for exaggeration of the light output claims.
You're seeing the first sign of it... you're suffering from the fact that they aren't comparing apples to apples... every halide lamp is different, and no two models of halide lamps of a given wattage emit the same light - it varies from manufacturer to manufacturer and from lamp model to lamp model. Color temperature plays a big part.
A 6500K halide produces many times more lumens in output than a 15K, then of course you have to think of it in terms of PAR value.
Most of the LED replacements sold on that famous site where you bid on stuff so greatly exaggerate their claims that I'm not sure I'd compare those LED systems to halide of half the wattage they are supposed to be comparative to...
You need to try to find a standard measure of lighting ouput, such as candelas, footcandles, lumens, PAR, etc - something that you can use to really compare it.

 

[wangotango]

A lot of the DIYed LED builds that I've seen using the 3w CREEs and optics had PAR numbers that did compete with the average 250w halide setup. The DIYers aren't trying to get you to buy the thing so I would trust their numbers.
If you're not looking to DIY, the Aquailluminations LED fixture looks the most promising.
-Justin

 

[gregzbobo]

Another thing to consider is LED optics, shallow tanks can often do without them, but as you get much deeper than about 18-22 inches, optics may need to come into play, deeper than 24" and optics are almost a must. Price is also a major player, a single Cree Q5 (107 lumens each at 350mA) can set you back around 7 bucks, and at a nominal 2" spacing between emitters, you may end up spending hundreds, not to mention 20 bucks a piece on the drivers (most are good for 6 emitters), plus suitable heatsinks and power supply units.
The AI fixture is very nice, and quite elegant, but on the other hand you can get better PAR with a DIY solution if you do it right and at a lower cost.
I have an LED setup on order for my NC12DX and it has been demonstrated to produce 200ish PAR on the sandbed, and 400+ just under the water surface. Sure beats the guesstimated 70ish PAR of the stock lights.

 

[seschaefer]

I have been looking into this myself for a tank i want to start in the future. I have pm'd you with a link to take a look at. THere is a lot of good information there.