Does anyone know if any LFS around here carries this LED? or does anyone have personal experience with this? I've been looking into buying this small unit for a 22" inch deep tank. However, I'm getting mixed reviews of the light. Some say its not bright enough, the 10k one. Others say its more then plenty. I'd like to personally see this unit upfront and then consider if its bright enough for me. Thanks!
None of the LFS carry it that I know of. Then again I didn't go light shopping locally so I didn't really pay much attention. How many watts are the actual LED lights (not the fixture)? What are you wanting to grow? I ask because you can't expect a 1/4W LED to grow much more than soft beginner corals or a select few LPS. Wattage does make a difference, as does how the light is built and the driver.
Other consideration are optics and brand of LED. Bridgelux and CREE are the two main types of LEDs that are used for the aquarium lights. Also, as Nadia said, you will want to look and make sure you aren't getting fractional wattage per LED also. I have heard the 1W don't work well either, but as you said, mixed reviews. I do know that the 3W-5W work well.
There are many excellent brands of LED's out there. In my experience the 5W are a bit overkill though, especially on smaller tanks. As far as I'm aware (and I may be wrong) most of the big name really amazing fixture manufacturers are using 3W Cree, bridgelux, or Osram LED bulbs as well as others. Another thing to look out for... Make sure your fixture has a couple of "uv" bulbs. One problem that many people were running into with LED vs. t5 was the fact that their reds, purples, and oranges weren't showing as well or coloring up as well with the older LED fixtures until these were introduced. We've done a lot of research here at our house on LED's and personally I've been running an LED fixture for close to a year now with some pretty awesome results. We also recently added LED's to our new 150 tank and we're still having fun programming them.
This is whats inside the A150w Kessil. <span>30 watt DEX 2100 multi-chip </span><acronym title="light-emitting diode, a semiconductor light source">LED.</acronym> I've also heard that 3w are much better then 1w as well. I've seen these 60w cree leds on ebay. They are 3w's but I'm not sure if they are good. Not really made by a company I can search up much information on. As for now, I'm still searching for a good LED, or I can give up and just go Metal halides.
I'd almost skip on anything found on eBay. Just a personal preference, but a lot of stuff you find on there is wired funny or doesn't have a real heatsink or something. Have you thought about building one yourself? It's a really cool, fun way to get exactly what you want and not shell out extreme amounts of money. There are hundreds of DIY guides out there for them and I know for a fact they work as my husband and a friend built one for my 3 gallon as an experiment before we put LED's on our new tank. Mine has been running almost a year now.
Yeah, I've decided I will be making one myself. Going to order the parts from rapidled.com. I'm going to use 48 3w cree leds. 24 royal blue and 24 cool white. However, I was wondering if that would be enough light for my 36"18"x24" tank.
I'd suggest a couple of the UV bulbs as well as optics with your heatsink and drivers. Be sure to go with two drivers so you can run each color separately also. Oh yeah, if anything... A wee bit overkill. Be sure to leave yourself plenty of room to move your led fixture up away from the top of the tank if you plan to not have a canopy and if you do have one, spring for dimable drivers.
