Anyone around here every built an LED fixture?

[Dasani]

Need opinions on lights

Please excuse title, couldn't change it. I changed the thread up too.
I have decided not to do LED's. Gonna cost around $600 and I don't wanna spend that much on something that I could mess up very easily.
I found a site that sells cheap fixtures and haven't ever heard anything bad about them.
Anyways I need some inputs on which fixture I should get for my 40B (36"lx18"wx16"h)

1. A metal halide and t5 combo. 24" long with 1x 150w metal halide and 2 2x24w t5 fixtures
2. Another metal halide and t5 combo. 36" Long with 2x 150w metal halide fitures and 2 2x39w t5 fixtures
3. 2 seperate 150w metal halide pendants

 

[H@rry]

I don't think you'd be satisfied with the 24" fixture over a 36" tank. You'd have dark ends. Either of the other two should be OK but I would opt for #2 for the additional T5s. You could use them for the blue supplement with something like ATI Blue + bulbs.

 

[Dasani]

Would that be an overkill though? that's 300w mh and 156w of t5's. Would that bleach out acans and LPS?

 

[H@rry]

You may be right about that. I have 2 175W MH and 2 48" VHO actinics over my 48" x 18"h x 13"deep frag tank and I had problems with blue and purple SPS turning to pale pastel colors. I was running the MH for 8 hr and VHOs for 12 hrs. I backed off the MHs to 4 hrs and they seem to be holding their color now.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

36 x 18 inch foot print will be a bit of a problem for a metal halide bulb. One metal halide bulb normally covers 2 feet x 2 feet area. Your tank is very shallow as well. If you hang a MH bulb high enough to avoid bleaching and a spot light effect of a metal halide bulb, you will have a problem of light splling way outside of the tank. If you want to use metal halide bulbs over such a shallow tank, I'd go with two 14K or 20K 70-watt metal halide bulbs with no actinic supplement. Your tank will stay cooler and you use less electricity as well. I have used a 70W MH and a 50W PC actinic supplement over my 29 gallon tank and SPS's and softies grew well in it. I used an Ushio 10K MH at first. The light was so white and strong that the color appeared washed out even with a 50W actinic PC bulb. A 14K MH bulb made a big difference. You can also use a 96W 50/50 PC bulb (34 inches long) and a 96W actinic PC bulb without making the tank too blue. A 50/50 PC bulb only has a slight amount of blue. The combination produces a color comparable to 14K metal halide and looks a lot prettier than a daylight PC and an actinic PC combination in my experience.

 

[Dasani]

I think I may just run 2 70w metal halide pendants. There are to many options for t5's and I just wanna keep it simple. I may also add 2 36" 2 bulb fixtures in the future. Fishneedit has a connecting kit that I can use.