LED Lighting Clearly LEDs

[bobbyreefer]

I mentioned a week ago I ordered an LED Panal from ClearlyLEDs.com Well i got it on Sat and I am very impressed so far. The light produced is extremely bright and looks very pleasing. already thinking about making an order for a few more to light the whole tank.

[Eduardo]

Bobbyreefer,

I am looking alternative to add more light to my current lighting system (MH 250W HQI), I really do not want to add another MH due temp issues. An alternative are LEDs, however I am trying to find the cheaper way to do this because I live outside of US so if I add handing and shipping the final price raise.

The system you mention is a little pricely because 200 leds will give you about 400 lumens and 4 luxeon leds will give you the about same lumens for $6 each led plus $30 for the drivers without use the lens which can improve performance. All what I just said is from what I read in the web, I am not expert, but luxeon leds seem to be very effective.

[bobbyreefer]

Eduardo,

If you experiment with The Luxion type I would be interesting to compare the results.

From my understanding there are many different types and qualities of LEDs both high wattage type like Luxion and the standard LED type like Clearly LEDs is implimenting. I don't think it is fair to say that 200 LEDs is equal to 10 Luxeon type LEDs because of the different light output qualities of each depending on where you get them from.

All I know is that I have expereimented with white LEDs before in my car and these LEDs on the Clearly LED panels are like 10 times as bright. Also there is no heat produced and power usage is unnoticable. I think I read somewhere that each of their panels uses less then 10 watts of power.

I am not too familier with the high wattage luxeon type but don't they create alot create alot of heat?

Bobby Reef

[chris melb]

Bobbyreefer do u have any pics, im also interested in ontaining some LED from clearlyled.com. I think LED lighting has huge potential in reefsystems. I have also been warned about Luxeon led generating a bit of heat, some manufactures i was told recommend using heat sinks with them.

[mr. bojangsjang]

Are the panels hard to install? I am not at all a DIY'er especially lighting and I won't wanna mess with wiring and the such.

Also, how much area does each panel illuminate?

Do you get that MH shimmer with the LED's?

[Icefire]

bobbyreefer ClearlyLEDs.com use standard leds rated at 3.5v@20mA.
Those leds give very few lumens/watts compared to LUXEON.

200 leds would give you about 14w of power.

5 Luxeons K2 would give you 25w and about 2000 lumens for 35$ in leds.

[draleigh]

pics pics pics. I am considering using LEDs on my tank for many reasons but after reading through the ClearlyLEDs website i believe it is more possible then before. I don't see why it wouldn't work. So for a few hundred i think it is worth trying, i have spent more then that on stuff i didn't really need for the tank.

So bobbyreefer, you got some pics you can upload and show us.

[Icefire]

draleigh If you want leds for a 180G prepare to pay near 3000$.

[Fredfish]

I wish folks would take a little more time to quantify 'looks bright' and consider what it means when something puts out less lumens per watt than a standar light source.

LEDs, in their present state are less efficient and HOTTER than standard light sources. If those watts are not producing light, they are producing heat.

The second generation Luxions are finally getting some decent results on led life. If only they could get a little more efficient...

Fred

[bobbyreefer]

chris,

Sorry i don't have any pics to show yet but I have to borrow a digital camera from a friend. I think I am just going to bite the bullet a buy one (camera). i will post them when I can. they have some cool pics on the CLEARLYLEDS.com site. If you click on one of them shows you a 40 gallon tank all lit up. Pretty cool. I will post when I am able.
Bobby REEF

[bobbyreefer]

I will get pics when I can get some taken. Hopefully soon. sorry for the delay. I take the experimenting approach myself. I have spent far more dollars on stuff I haven't really used. This LED stuff really intrigues me. Get one to play with so we can compare results.

Bobby Reef

Originally posted by draleigh
pics pics pics. I am considering using LEDs on my tank for many reasons but after reading through the ClearlyLEDs website i believe it is more possible then before. I don't see why it wouldn't work. So for a few hundred i think it is worth trying, i have spent more then that on stuff i didn't really need for the tank.

So bobbyreefer, you got some pics you can upload and show us.

[mr. bojangsjang]

I don't mean to put you on the spot Bobby Reef but why are all of your 13 posts promoting clearlyleds.com???

[bobbyreefer]

to install eletrically you just have take the two wires coming from the power supply and attach them to the wires on the board.. much like putting a battery in teh right way make sure the + goes to the + side and - to the minus side.

in regards to the Clearly LED post I joined REEf Central after I came across thre website. I ask a local aquarium store fish guy about the LED panels and he told to try to learn more through the forum at Reef HQ. maybe I can get them to give me a kick back!

Bobby Reef

Originally posted by mr. bojangsjang
Are the panels hard to install? I am not at all a DIY'er especially lighting and I won't wanna mess with wiring and the such.

Also, how much area does each panel illuminate?

Do you get that MH shimmer with the LED's?

[mr. bojangsjang]

OK seems easy. Thanks Bobby.

[Icefire]

8x6x5" 204 leds for 85$...
3lm/leds 612 lumens

Luxeons K2 135lm/leds @ 3.5$/ea.

http://www.dialight.com/misc/Lightfa...resentation%20(6-1-06).pdf

[mr. bojangsjang]

Dead link Ice. I know that Luxeons put out more lumens/PAR than the clearlyLEDs version but is there any simple way to make a Luxeon fixture? I would be interested in a DIY luxeon fixture but I don't wanna spend like 10 hours making one and blowing my self up with the wiring LOL.

[pulse13]

Those fixtures use 5mm LEDs, not high power LEDs. They have a rated life at best 10K hours, and the epoxy housing will most likely yellow before then.

[wired]

I'm wondering if you guys are looking at LEDs for large tanks here or for the nanos that some of you have?

There's an interesting article I came across from back in 2003:
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issu...03/feature.htm

One fellow is using 3 LEDs to light his nano. Though the tank looked somewhat OK, the conclusion would seem that he should have had close to 250 μE/m2 at the bottom of his tank which would say that he required something like 30 LEDs.

The array that Clearlly LEDs has would seem to be too large for a nano with 200+ LEDs. I wonder if they would consider making custom panels for nanos. Perhaps I'll ask.

All in all, I'm not completely impressed with the site as there is little scientific evidence put forth there. I'd much prefer to hear from a few people who've been using LEDs for a couple of months and get a feel for what they think the viability of this technology is at this point in time.

[LSD_Zeppelin]

Do you think that guys coral/clam actually grew and survived under 3 leds?

[wired]

Good question.

I gave the article a careful read though I'm really no good with math.

It looks like he had 235 mE/m2 at the water surface and a ten fold loss to the bottom (where he needed the 235 to be). If that calc is on the mark he would have needed three times the amout of LEDs, a 30 LED array. The rub there is that he'd be sucking 130 Watts and basically be less efficient than a smaller metal hallide.

I'm thinking that the overall Lumen output of his LEDs must have been very poor. I'm no expert by any means but I don't trust Kelvin ratings when it comes to LEDs b/c I believe they are more narrow band wavelength specific (and kelvin is really just to compare to wideband sun type rays). Additionally, watts is a useless metric so I do prefer to think in lumens as that likely is a more realistic light over distance calculation.

All in all, I wouldn't mind hearing an opinion from someone who actually knew something about the subject. If you're out there, please chime in.




... I also wouldn't mind hearing what Tullio has to say about his little old tank and how long it lasted. He seems to be the expert in this field.

I found his Bio here: http://www.aquaticresearchanddevelopment.com/bios.htm

and if you're in the Chicago area:
http://www.theimac.org/tdellaquila.htm

[bobbyreefer]

Pic of my clearlyleds.com LED panel on a small reef.

Originally posted by draleigh
pics pics pics. I am considering using LEDs on my tank for many reasons but after reading through the ClearlyLEDs website i believe it is more possible then before. I don't see why it wouldn't work. So for a few hundred i think it is worth trying, i have spent more then that on stuff i didn't really need for the tank.

So bobbyreefer, you got some pics you can upload and show us.

[wired]

Bobby,

So I see you finally got the Digicam to show us some pictures. Can you tell us anything about your impressions from using the light.

From the photo it looks like you're holding it over the nano. Is it normally used on this tank or did you grab it over for show?

I think we're all interested in hearing your opinions about it's effectiveness. Also do you have any specs on the unit you have?
For the 200+ LEDs what wattage does it consume? In the photo are you using ALL the LEDs or did you leave the blue arrays off, etc???

Thanks.

[wired]

Hi folks.

I'm always happy when a find a thread becomes useful and I'm hoping this helps out a bit.

Tullio was actually nice enough to email me back with some more info and opinions of his own. rather than paraphrase and get something wrong I'll just paste it here...

---
First off there was some minor errors in the data, it was actually 15 watts- 3 five watt LED's and as Mike admitted there was no reflectors for the led's which had a 180 degree radiation pattern which meant a lot of light was actually lost or absorbed. If there had been reflectors the light output would have easily acheived a PAR reading of between 100-180 throughout the aquarium well above the 80 or higher that was believed sufficient at the time. Plus this aquarium was literally the first to demonstrate the future of LED's as we know it today.

Today we have special reflectors and the luminous efficiency of our LED's has gone up significantly. But even back then if you looked at the picture the tank was actually lit up pretty well and the corals where happy. Plus conventional meters do not always accurately plot led output. There is a lot more to understanding and measuring the benefits of LED's than simply adding an array and lighting it up.

There is a thing I like to call usable PAR which essentially means there are very specific wavelengths of light that corals respond to. With Halides and other systems you can show me all the luminous data and PAR data you like it essentially means they need a lot of light just to satisfy the spectral requirements of corals to thrive.

With LED's we can focus specifically on the spectrum we want to essentially color tune to the specific wavelengths of light we are targeting therefor giving the LED an upper hand at usable spectral output versus lumens! If you have the chance to catch one of my talks this year I always demonstrate the fixtures with my spectrometer and you would clearly see that LED's in many ways have come a long way since then. The only draw back is the systems do cost more, same as the first computers when they first came out. As consumer demand grows and production rises costs comes down and so forth.
---

'course, I did write him back and ask about the units he's designing and if he's going to be selling directly or through distributors.

I'm a bit torn by the findings since I was leaning toward using what I learned from Mike and trying to place coral at different heights in my tank giving them the light they require. On the flip side, I'm concerned with over-lighting them spectrally and having to frag corals likecrazy

I'm still a firm believer that lighting remains oneof the most complex components of fish keeping esp. b/c we combine animals who tend to live at vastly different depths.

[bobbyreefer]

I thought I posted A reply to your message already "Wired" but I don't see it anywhere.

The Clearly LEDs panel is held over the tank you saw for the pic but remains on the tank. Both Blue and white Lights were on for that picture.

Somewhere I read the LED panels draw around 10 watts total. Everything is great so far.

[daytonians]

Well, don't to be a party pooper, but I'm waiting for more reviews before I send my money.

I definitely looks promising.