Led lights - questions - what should I do?

[asn-naso]

Has anyone used the triple LED pucks from rapid LED?

http://www.rapidled.com/triple-puck-kits/

They have a Cree-Blue, Cree-Royal Blue, and Cree White, and look pretty easy to setup. Much easier then then one I did in my BC29. If I were to buy 3 of those kits, it would cost about $600, vs $500 for 3 Chinese LED kids from Duice_Bigalow in eBay. (The ones Mike used). Evos would cost $1200+.

The only downside is, there is no red or green, both could be added, but I am not sure they are necessary. Any feedback??

 

[Fitz19d]

You trade easy for cost. Could build your own completely by yourself for a bit cheaper using either a mixture of pucks and singles or just doing single LEDS with the mix of your choice.

 

[Smiley]

Re: Led lights - questions - what should I do?

Or you could do a single kessil pendant or an AI for around $400

Sent from my C771

 

[Munch]

The prices on the Kessil a350's should be dropping with the release of the new controllable 360.

I just sold mine for $335, and that was just before the 360 was announced. I'd guess you could get one for $300 or so.

 

[asn-naso]

I was hoping to put the lights in a canopy, which rules out the Kessil's. AI's are nice, but I would need at least 3 of them for a 6 foot tank, which puts me at $1200. While I really like to support our local vendors (ie: reefkoi), I think the evo's will be too much, which leaves me with the ebay ones from Duiece Bigalow, or a DIY from rapidled. The ebay ones would be cheaper, and are 120 watt's per unit, but the DIY may work better for spreading the light out.

How important are the red/green/cyan colors? Also, what would provide better growth, 72 watts of cree's, or 120 watts of the bridgelux (ebay)?

 

[that0neguy1126]

Can't really use wattage as a good indicator of the LED's since each one of them is different. What you want to look at is how efficient they are, or in other words, lumens per watt.

Take for example. If the cree's put out 2 lumens per watt, and the bridgelux put our 1 lumen per wat. The cree's will give you more light.

I am not sure there is enough people running multi color LED's to say for certian if they make a huge difference. I would like to add a few purple, cyan, red, to mine, but time will tell. If I was building a fixture from scratch today. I would build it with enough light from just the Blue and White, and then add extra color's. That way if you need to, you could turn the extra color's off and still have enough light.