LED lighting as sole source of tank lights

[chipmaker]

I have a feeling as others do that aquarium liighting is heading this way in the future. I am kind of illiterate on electronic stuff, but have a friend that is into it big time. He recently made a ring light for his microscope that is awesome. Turned up high it comes out to .9X the light output of tropical sun. Its made with a LED type device called a Luxeon. There is 4 of them, each 1 watt in power. He did some calculations for me on it as compared to PC lights and 20 three-watt luxeons would be 60 watts, which probably would compare reasonably well with a 50 watt MH light. The heat output is negligible and considerabaly less than MH would be... Luxeons are about 2x the price of most commonly used LEDs but you do not need to use as many of them.
The coral life lunar lights are not actual LEDs but are Luxeons, which explains their intensity as compared to other typical LED moon lights....So were gonna make a Luxeon high assembly for a PICO tank and see how it all works out. Also going to make an array of Luxeons for one of my larger tanks that is illuminated with PC's and see how may luxes it produces and give some stonies and clams a try.....ANother good thing about them is if the proper collimator is used it virtually eliminates any light spill over typical of PC and MH.
As cheap as LEDs and Luxeons are, I can just see what prices a completed hood / light asembly will go for once the various aquatic equipment companies get their hands into it...

 

[acrylic51]

What spectrum are the lights, PAR readings and such....More to lighting than just brighter or brighter than the sun.....Not saying that things won't head that way at some point, but I'm pretty sure if it was in the near future some company would have put something at as a tease by now.....

 

[lepete]

Ohhh, I like the idea...
I actually have the Inova white LED flashlight. It is not a single LED but 8 or 10 smaller LEDs. It is powered by 2 123A Lithium batteries. The beam is WHITE and BRIGHT. I think it is feasible now to make LED aquarium light for FO tanks. Because they are more efficent, we might can do 2W/gallon for reef (aside from other issues like PAR, spectrum)... and no more heat problems.

 

[scsinet]

As cheap as LEDs are, you'd need a ton of them to light a tank. Bright as they appear, they still lack the pinpoint intensity of MH. They may rival fluorescent or even surpass it, but LEDS don't have enough of a "beam spread" to be useful. They still produce light across a very narrow area, and if you use a lens to spread it out, you lose intensity.
I think you are right, aquarium lighting will soon go this way, but by soon I mean within a few years or so. The technology still has further go to.

 

[pfitz44]

Not true....
You can buy LEDs that will only output 10 degrees infront of them... thats pretty close to pin point accuracy!

 

[scsinet]

Ummm yeah that's what I am saying. I am saying that they have too much of pinpoint accuracy to be useful. LEDs have the intensity they have because there is a small lens built onto the front of the package that focuses the light output. If you either (A) somehow removed that lens or (B) used a second lens to spread the beam out, you'd have light that was too dim to be useful in an aquarium.
The solution to that? Use a ton of them. Think about it... if you take a single bright LED in a dark room and point it at a white wall, then back away from the wall about the same distance as a tank is deep...maybe 18-24 inches, how big is that spot going to be (maybe 6 inches or so) and how bright is it going to be (not very, compared to tank lights).
To use enough LEDs to light a fish tank that is ... say...55g and up, you'd need a lot of them...several hundred at least. When you consider that these 13,000 mcd white LED at quantities of a thousand costs about a buck each, plus the cost of the fixture itself, your costs are still too high. You also have the wavelength to consider, which I am not even going to get into.
I'm not saying it can't be done and that it wouldn't be an idea worth getting excited about, it's just not a perfect solution (lots of light, little heat, little cost) yet.

 

[lepete]

Check out 8" traffic light LEDs ... 400 cd for $100. How bright is 400cd (or 13000 mcd) anyways? ... comparing to an aquarium bulb.

 

[scsinet]

Well the problem is that LEDs and other lighting are rated differently.
LEDs are rated in Candlepower (cd) or more often, micro-candles (mcd), or thousandths of a candle power.
Most lighting such as fluorescent, MH, etc are rated in lumens.
Different bulbs put out different amounts of light, but a quick google told me that some 175 wall MH out there puts out 10,000 lumens mean. We'll use that for our MH reference, and a 10,000 white LED for the LED reference.
Roughly speaking, one candlepower (cd) = 13 lumens.
10,000 lumens / 13 = 770cd (rounded up)
10,000 mcd = 10cd
Therefore, it would take 77 LEDs to produce the same light output as one 175w MH light.
Another way of looking at it is that let's say we want 7wpg of MH light (or equivelant). In a 55 gallon tank, we'd need 385 watts of MH light. That's (2) 175 watt MH bulbs, so 20,000 lumens of light. That's 1,540 cd, or 154 LEDs.
I will come off my original figure of several hundred since I calculated this, but I imagine that the costs would still be prohibitive. Since LEDs don't have a wide beam spread, you'd have to arrange them in an array that is pretty much across the whole top of the tank in order to get an even light across it. The labor involved in setting this up might make it not worth it, but I'd be really interested to see somebody attempt it.
The other thing that might be worth mention is the heat... LEDS to burn cooler than just about anything else, but I wonder what would happen if you had 150 of them in one place..? :notsure:

 

[chipmaker]

I am not talking about the most commonly used LED, I am talking about luxeons.....while it may be a LED of sorts due to its principal its properties are totally different. There is also a large choice of collimators for them, so you can make whatever degree of lighting you desire. Now I do knot really know jack about all the other terms like PAR etc etc etc, but what my friend has been doing certainly looks quite favorable and a lot more intense lighting and good colors than what I have ever seen with standard LEDS. I guess I am just going to have to wait until he gets my list of materials up and we get it built and put it to test..........I just do not know how to break it to the wife there will be yet another tank somewhere in this already overloaded house of fish tanks.

 

[scsinet]

Originally Posted by chipmaker
I just do not know how to break it to the wife there will be yet another tank somewhere in this already overloaded house of fish tanks.
When you figure out how to do this, let me know as I would find this information useful.

 

[bawood]

I suspect it will only work for FO tanks. I thought that one of the principles of LEDs is that the only put out one wavelength of light.... Maybe I am wrong.

 

[juiced_rl]

Originally Posted by lepete
Check out 8" traffic light LEDs ... 400 cd for $100. How bright is 400cd (or 13000 mcd) anyways? ... comparing to an aquarium bulb.
That is funny that you bring that up I sell Traffic lights and traffic control equipment to Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada

 

[lepete]

Originally Posted by Juiced_RL
That is funny that you bring that up I sell Traffic lights and traffic control equipment to Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada
Entertain us about these LED then
At my previous job a few years ago, I played with these lights. We did 'Public Safety' for Ohio.

 

[juiced_rl]

Well I am not that technical with the LED's but I can provide as much information as I can. If someone where able to get me the specs on what exactly an aquarium needs as far as spectrum and brightness I am sure I can get some questions answered by my supplier.
We carry this companies products Gelcore
I don't sell these but I would almost say that the commercial refigirator lights would be the best Here
They say that the white LED is 6500K
I carry the LED retro fit kits for Illuminated Street Name signs but honestly prices are more then a nice PC and MH housing but they are specifically designed for the signs and since we where the first to do it we charge alot. Link
There is some informative information in their Education Section that could help someone that understands the aquarium lights better then I think of some interesting stuff.

 

[jbrinker]

This is some interesting stuff. I read the datasheets about the luxon V white, and the highlights are:
http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/ledsu...eon-StarVW.pdf
Output at 20C - 120cd nominal
Color temp at 20C, 700mA - 10,000K
50% dropoff angle - 120 deg
All that sounds just about perfect. They have a spectrum graph too, that looks just about exactly like any 10,000K CF bulb, heavy in the blue (420nm) and a wide hump up through the yellows, tapering to nothing at red.
The only problems Id see with this are:
- Specifically they state this is new, and designed for appliactions that have an expected lifespan of less than 500 hours... (Uncharacterized lifetime/spectrum/output beyond that)
- Light output and spectrum are negatively effected above 30C - so a heatsink would be required (no biggie there)
- The cost - $9 each...
All in all Id love to see someone build something with these. Oh, and they do specifically state that longer-life versions are in the works.
Edit - Ohyeah, so to take that calculation above a bit further using the luxons, at 120cd each, 7*120 = 840cd = more than (1) 175 watt MH. Right? (someone check me) If so, at 700mA each thats a HUGE electricity savings... ~7 watts Vs. 175? wow. And arranging these things in an "aimed" cluster you could simulate the point-source of MH and get the "ripple" lighing effects that are supposed to be so beneficial...
Jeff

 

[jbrinker]

Just as an added note for anyone following this... Further research showed me that the Luxeon V portable white is the ultra high output, but limited life version (120 lumen, but 1000 hr life)
However the Luxeon III is rated for 100,000 hr lifetime. Output is a more modest 60 lumen.
And a little more research led me to these:
http://www.besthongkong.com/product_...roducts_id=161
Which are, as you guessed, chineese knock-offs. However if you look at the datasheet, they are available in several "color bins" for white, from 2400K all the way up to 6800K. And the bonus, only $4 each... Output is ~50lumen each. So, 2=100, or 14 = 700 = 1MH lamp. 14 of these would draw about 14-30 watts.
Jeff

 

[juiced_rl]

One thing I have noticed about cheaper LED's having carried a few different brands for the traffic signals is that most of the time the colors don't match.
LED manufacturers had a real hard time in the beggining producing anything with a blue and white
I have seen White LED's that came from the same factory and the next serial number from some of the cheaper manufacturers when sat side by side one will look blue and the other could even look yellow.
But once again it goes back to the old saying you pay for what you get.

 

[rhomer]

I read an article about these sometime ago, and the goal was to get these bulbs to last 10-20 years. I would think that this would justify paying a much higer price for them.