Ace25
Active Member
I see so many threads about people hating LEDs (mainly the colors). I wanted to see how many people actually like their LEDs? I am in the latter group. I ran T5s and MH for many years (15+) but the cost of replacing bulbs every 3 months got to be to expensive for me (because I ran my MHs on an PFO M80 ballast and my T5s on an Icecap660).
My first LED light I made back in 2010 to replace a 250w MH.. still working perfect to this day, still costing me 1/4 the electricity and no bulb replacement costs. I studied the spectrum each LED gives off and designed my light to give the most spectral coverage at the time and I have been extremely happy with it.
Installed in the canopy with 4x 24" T5HO 420 Actinics in the beginning, now those are gone, replaced with 420 LEDs as of a couple weeks ago. When I built it, XP-G Cool whites had just come out, everything else was still the old style XR-E series.
And the PAR reading I got with LEDs @ 100% (No T5s on for PAR test), 14" under the light at the surface of the water. I get 600+ PAR at the sandbed on a 24" deep tank (if I turn the LEDs up to 100%, which I don't). The best PAR reading I could get with a MH was overdriving an XM 10k 250w bulb up to 375w, and I only got 800 PAR doing so AND had to replace the bulb every 30 days (all it would last when overdriving it that hard)
After learning more about LEDs and realizing I waaaay overbuilt my first LED light, the second "ghetto" one I made is 24 LEDs for a standard 60G tank, mounted 18" above the tank and grows anything, even SPS acropora on the sandbed. Yes, that is Duct tape to shield my eyes while sitting on the couch, always too busy to make a ABS skirt to go around it but I will some day. As you can see, I had a few XR-E LEDs laying around that I used on this fixture, the rest are XP series. Since this was my ghetto light and I mostly used LEDs I had laying around and I ended up with 10 royal blues, 2 cool blues, and 12 cool whites. Even though I didn't add any warmer colors, I still like the looks of it.
My first LED light I made back in 2010 to replace a 250w MH.. still working perfect to this day, still costing me 1/4 the electricity and no bulb replacement costs. I studied the spectrum each LED gives off and designed my light to give the most spectral coverage at the time and I have been extremely happy with it.
Installed in the canopy with 4x 24" T5HO 420 Actinics in the beginning, now those are gone, replaced with 420 LEDs as of a couple weeks ago. When I built it, XP-G Cool whites had just come out, everything else was still the old style XR-E series.
And the PAR reading I got with LEDs @ 100% (No T5s on for PAR test), 14" under the light at the surface of the water. I get 600+ PAR at the sandbed on a 24" deep tank (if I turn the LEDs up to 100%, which I don't). The best PAR reading I could get with a MH was overdriving an XM 10k 250w bulb up to 375w, and I only got 800 PAR doing so AND had to replace the bulb every 30 days (all it would last when overdriving it that hard)
After learning more about LEDs and realizing I waaaay overbuilt my first LED light, the second "ghetto" one I made is 24 LEDs for a standard 60G tank, mounted 18" above the tank and grows anything, even SPS acropora on the sandbed. Yes, that is Duct tape to shield my eyes while sitting on the couch, always too busy to make a ABS skirt to go around it but I will some day. As you can see, I had a few XR-E LEDs laying around that I used on this fixture, the rest are XP series. Since this was my ghetto light and I mostly used LEDs I had laying around and I ended up with 10 royal blues, 2 cool blues, and 12 cool whites. Even though I didn't add any warmer colors, I still like the looks of it.
