Aqua Illuminations LEDs

[boboxx]

dont buy the AI haning kit it's grabage and expensive....
- buy a some #10-32 bolts, drill the head with a 1/8" bit
- buy a some stainless gear cables from the local bike shop

It will cost about 8$ and you will be very satisfied of the look.

[ToddW]

Ur just full of ideas eh christian lol. They will be going in my canopy. I was hoping to mount them right to the top of it but then i think i would be blocking the fan. Have to wait n see what i can rig up when the time comes.

[boboxx]

ha for you all you would have to do is to get 3" bold wan use a 1-1/2" spacer mounted to the top rail of the canopy...

Hard to see but like this:

[cytex]

Here's my 2 cents on the LED lighting:

A couple of years ago I bought the Solaris LED system (around $3200) for my tank and had sent it back after less than a week. The LED's just didn't have the "punch" that MH have in lighting the tank. There were lots of shadows, the periphery of the tank was dark, and the colours of the corals were not bright - likely because the lighting is not bright like a MH. When the "cloud mode" came on, it looked like the lights went out. I think the corals liked the LED, as the polyps were extended and the corals near the top of the tank bleached a bit because of the high PAR values the LED's emitted. But I want a lighting system for me as much as my corals. They looked happy, but if I couldn't see them well, I wasn't happy.

Maybe the newer LED's are stronger than the Solaris. Or maybe I needed 2 or 3 Solaris's over my tank, although it was advertised that 1 Solaris = 400-500 W of MH.

Before you shell out big bucks for an LED system, make sure you can return it if you don't like it.

[mikebpeters]

that is certainly good advice. The Solaris were certainly plauged by problems until the company went under. The newer systems are far more powerful and considerably cheaper.

I have an apointment to look at a set up though and I will use that to determine whether or not that is the route I go.

Thanks for your input

[ToddW]

Let me know how it goes mike

[mikebpeters]

I found another good post over on RC

I've been wondering if there is a way to estimate the PAR output under a single AI module for any given depth and at any combined output percentage of blue and white LEDs. I asked AI if there was a means of calculating this, and they responded that there was, as long as the 100% PAR value is known for the depth you are interested in calculating. The formula they use is quite simple: (PAR @ 100% * 0.65) * blue Percent (in decimal form) + (PAR @ 100% * 0.35) * W Percent (in decimal form) = scaled PAR (+/- 10%). They say that in their testing, this formula is fairly good at predicting PAR. So, for this formula to work, you must have a reference set of PAR measurements taken at all depths of interest. I just took teh measurements given on the first page for 6, 12, 16, 19, and 24" and extrapolated them by taking the difference and dividing by the number of bins between measurements. This gives the following estimated PAR measurements for every inch increment from 6" to 24" depth.

Par depth (in.)

1650 6
1603 7
1556 8
1510 9
1463 10
1416 11
1370 12
1256 13
1143 14
1029 15
915 16
840 17
765 18
690 19
664 20
638 21
612 22
586 23
560 24

So, if you want an estimate of the PAR at a given depth for a given percentage of white and blue, you just take the 100% par value for this depth, and multiply according to the given formula. So, for example, I want to know what the PAR is at 12" below one unit running at 20% white and 55% blue. So, I would use the 100% value for 12" depth, which is 1370, and plug the following into the formula:

estimated PAR at 12" = ((1370*0.65)*0.55)+((1370*0.35)*0.20) = 541

Of course, AI gives a +/- 10% margin of error, so the estimated PAR value should range from 486 to 595 at 12" depth with the settings mentioned. It would be great if someone with a PAR meter could confirm this estimate is valid. If so, this formula has the potential to help out quite a few people.

[Dashing]

Why not do a group buy of diy leds I believe the newer version of aqua illumination use cree xp series leds... Depending on quantity I can give the best wholesale price in canada.

if you want to diy you can save a lot of money...

As always, I'm open to pms...

cheers,

Richard.