Sweet!

I agree 100%. I thought it was bunk of a claim. I have a friend I just came from visiting who brought this setup. I was blown away at how bright they are! I need to get my PAR meter under there to see what it reads but was hopeful for your opinion.

Looking forward to more info when you have the time.

____________________________________

-Amy-

There was cautious mention of coral placement, i.e. the spread of the fixture is lacking compared to MH, PC, T5, or VHO fixtures.  That led me to further ask myself, where's the mention of PAR/PUR reduction at depth?  Are we to assumed that there is also a limitation to depth as well as linear placement of corals?  For the price, which reminds me a lot of those hybrid cars, the cost would hardly be defrayed by replacing bulbs every year in my case since I'd need at least 6 48" units for my 450. 

The sum of my knowledge is great, the sum of my ignorance greater still

Kieron Dodds, Administrator - Inside Aquatics

Any new comments on this lighting system? 

Thanks,

Mike

Riverside

What I have found is that the claims around LED lights are misleading at best.

The idea that LEDs are much more efficient than other forms of lighting came from red, green and amber LEDs which, I believe, are direct immitters.

White light is not so simple to create and white LED emmitters use phosphors to generate white light.  That is: they use phosphors to convert light generated by an emmitter to white light.

The efficiency just isn't there.

Heres a simple comparison.  Go to the Lumileds site and take a look at the initial lumens per watt generated by their best white LED.  It is 40 lumens/watt.

Now go to the manufacturer of any MH bulb and look at the initial lumens per watt for any MH bulb.  You will be looking at somewhere in the 90 to 100 lumens/watt range.  Some of the high K specialty bulbs probably have a lower rating

Now, this dosn't speak to the quality of light generated by each source or the amound of light you can direct down towards your tank (the LUMILEDS leds are 18 degree emmitters), but thats one heck of a difference for LEDs to make up to live up to their claims.

Another way to look at LED efficiency is by their common use.  If white LEDs were so much more efficient thant their competitors, they would be the primary backlight in displays from computer monitors to large screen flat pannel TVs.  Yet this is the first year we are actually seeing LEDs as backlights in fp TVs and the reason for using them is the quality of light they generate, not their efficiency.

Because the current LED technology uses phosphors, I do not think they will ever reach efficiencies better than the current Fluorescent technology. 

Now, if you want to look at a light source that may offer much higher efficiencies, take a look at carbon nanotube lighting.  Unfortunately, they are just now producing the first prototypes, so it may be a year or ten before we see anything practical for aquarium applications.  It really is a cool technology though!!

Fred

I am not very knowledgeable about lighting, but at the IMAC, they had 2 tanks i think 18" deep, one with a 400w MH and the other with the 24 " solaris, and the probe for par meter about 6-8" from bottom... the solaris was slightly more par ~140, the MH ~135...

so may penetrate, and using the mixture of color it does it may compensate somewhat as it looked almost as bright to my eye, but ? may not be providing the true spectrum of what is needed?

I was also baffled, as they say the led's will last long term, but any moonlight i have had burns out after 1-5 months, are they different types perhaps?  sorry if dumb ?'s



Peace...

Dan

There is a big difference in the quality and life of different LEDs.  There are lots of cheapo LEDs out of china that fail quickly for a variety of reasons.  Last time I checked, the LUMILEDS used in the fixture you saw were verified out to 26,000 hours, pretty decent life, but not the 50K to 100K hours marketing blurbs claim.  I think that part of it is that these bulbs are still so new that they havn't been able to test out past the number I gave.  50k hours is about 5 years of continuous use.

The high brightness LEDs are still relatively new tecknology, so they may well get to the point where the lumen output improves and we see 50k hours of life.

I suspect that MH will remain king of the high par reef lighting heap for some time to come.

Fred