Solaris

[Charlie's Angel]

Does anyone have any experience with the Solaris LED for a 30 inch deep tank? Any advice would be great...I am putting together a 96x30x30 and am looking at these lights for a potential option.

Thanks

[jmchzn]

I have 48" on a 90. You might want to wait for the 400 w.

I heard 30 deep works but 30 w you may need 2. great light very happy.

[Charlie's Angel]

I was worried that I might need 4 48' with a 30 inch width...thanks for the advice

[bstreep]

The "400w" version is due in about 4 weeks. Allegedly, it will work to a similar depth as a 400w MH.

[blkdrgn]

Solaris' website says that the 400W already is available. That is what I'm going to get.

http://www.solarisled.com/

[Charlie's Angel]

Cost is my only issue with the 400w...looks like that is the route I need to go.

[kirans]

Sorry guys, I just found out about this whole LED phenomenon and wanted to know more about the life span of these fixtures. I went to the solaris website and this is what I found:

"The Solaris uses Luxeon LED's. The LED's were originally developed by HP and since have been aquired by Phillips Lighting. They are the highest quality, with the highest light output, available in the world today.

Luxeon rates their Blue LED's for 50,000 hours and the white LED's for 50,000 hours. They state that they will maintain 70% of their light output for the stated life.

These life ratings are stated for running the LED's at 700ma and running less than 120 Degrees C at the junction temperature. The Solaris Junction temperature is less than 50 Degrees C. The lower the temperature the longer the life. Our junction temperature is so low because of our patent pending thermal design. This cool running not only gives longer life, but it also increases the light output compared to running it at the maximum temperature of 120 Degrees C.

One way to increase the light output is to run the LED's at 1000ma or greater. The problem with that is it shortens the life. The gain is, the fixture initially generates more light. We are a certified luxeon manufacturer and so we run our LED's to the manufacturers specifications."

Maybe I'm just dense but doesn't this say that if you want to get the longest life out of these fixtures you have run them at 70% of their capacity?

Is this 70% of the 400w + 20k specifications they have listed?

Will these lights fade out over their stated 11 year (running them 12 hours a day) life span?

Maybe these are all dumb questions, but I would love to know the answers to them!

Thanks!

[ipwizard]

I think what they are saying is that they are running their systems at 70% of the max listed by the manufactor (Phillips Lumileds).
Lumileds max for the leds that Solaris uses is 1000mA and they are running them at 700mA (70% of max) for a couple of reasons they mentioned. The big one being to keep heat down (these little buggers get freaking hot) that shortens their life span.

They must have found that they can get the right amount of light out of these leds while running them at 70% of max. I know the lenses also make a big difference in focusing the light.

Sounds like they are just giving a lot of technical information.

Dont know if this help out or makes it worse.