10 watt leds?

ok heres another thought to throw at you guys,what about 2 t5 10k whites for some brightness and the rest in led? i have been dreaming up all kinds of diferant crap last night,when i get onto something i end up all over the place lmao.i dont know i think i am throwing darts here trying to figure this out,i really want to go with all led,right now i only have 2 corals since my lighting really sucks right now
 
ok i am looking at differant led drivers,i seen on the one diy led lighting that the drivers are adjustable,is it possible to get a 50 watt driver and adjust the mA down to the 700mA needed to run the 3 watt leds? i dont want to know if you think i want to know if it will
i will be running 50 3 watt leds,30 blues 20 whites,i want to run 1 dimmable driver with whites and one or 2 dimmable with the blues
 
reeftanker, its awesome that you're looking to push the envelope a bit in your choice of LED. I would be weary of the links you posted to those LED's on ebay - they look like cheap chinese knockoffs to me. I read an interesting article (I'll see if I can dig it up, I beleive it was on Advanced Aquarist) about the huge influx of knock off LED products from China that are trying to capitalize on the popularity of LED's in the aquarium trade. I dont see any information on the manufactuer of those LED's - I'd try and do more research on them.

Those Ecoxotic cannon lights are pretty neat, you could possibly look into a few of those. I believe RapidLED sells a version of them as well

I also wanted to point out your comment about LED's looking dim. They will always look dimmer to the human eye then T5 or MH bulbs. This is becasue they put out less lumens (what our eyes register as 'brightness') than T5's or Metal Halides, while putting out far more PAR/PUR which is what our corals really care about.

Make no mistake, 3 Watt LED's are more than sufficient on our tanks, I have my AquaIllumination modules mounted 13 inches above the water line of my tank, and I manged to melt a light loving acropora that was at about the mid way point in my 24' deep tank. With the right choice of optics, there's no reason 3 watt Cree's couldnt provide the coverage you need. They're also some of the more proven LED's for our application. Many people have used them over thier tanks and are reporting success in coral growth and reliability of the LED itself
 
well as far as chinese lights go,rapid led seems to have everyone buying from them,i have looked up the cree lights and they all seem to be comming from china anyway,almost 95% of leds are from china,i find it really hard to find american made leds,and that still didnt answer my question about the drivers,i ordered 5 chinese made 3 watt leds to test with and find out how they work,
i am on a budget and am not able to fork out 1500 or even 500 on a set of premade leds that wont light my whole tank unless i buy 2 sets,to me this is to much for someone who doesnt have alot of money up front
 
Last edited:
reeftanker84 said:
ok i am looking at differant led drivers,i seen on the one diy led lighting that the drivers are adjustable,is it possible to get a 50 watt driver and adjust the mA down to the 700mA needed to run the 3 watt leds? i dont want to know if you think i want to know if it will
i will be running 50 3 watt leds,30 blues 20 whites,i want to run 1 dimmable driver with whites and one or 2 dimmable with the blues
Click to expand...
Yup. Your headed in the right direction. 50 watt driver won't be enough if you you plan on running 30 3watt blues = 90watts. 20 3watt whites = 60. Your dimmers are good though. And yes, you can adjust down on the 700mA controllers.
 
so could i get 1 100 watt dimable driver to run 90 watts worth 3 watt leds or would i be overloading even if i had a dimmer? most of these drivers have about 1.7 to 3 amps,what i am trying to get at is,are all led drivers adjustable like the meanwell type?
 
ok,you know of any more sities like like the last one? i really dont like to look on e-bay i would rather go with a better company anyway
 
You might want to look into multiple smaller drivers instead of one large driver.

Also, you need to look into what amps the drivers put out. This is because Watts isnt soley reliant on amps but also volts.

Lets say you have a 12 Volt power supply and a 5 Volt power supply. Both are rated for 120 Watts. Since

Power = Current X Volts,

The 12 Volt power supply will only put out a max of 10 amps but the 5 volt power supply can put out a max of 24 amps.

You can very well have a driver rated at 50 watts, but not put out enough amps to light the 10 watt LEDs.

Just something else to think about.
 
i was looking at amps as well brian,and most 12v drivers have more then enough amps to light them all,the only worry i have is overdriving them and burning them up,if i found a 100 watt dimmable driver 12v with a max of 3 to 5 amps would that work? or am i missing the key here,if each 3 watt led takes .7 ma do you add up all the ma for a total amount of amps? mabey i need a run down on how amp/volts and watts are determined in english terms lol
 
Many of the drivers for LEDs are what are called Current drivers. The put out a specific current and vary the voltage supplied. This works great because LEDs work best at a specific amperage and each LED requires a slightly different voltage across it to get that current. this is because no two LEDs are exactly alike and also their resistance changes as they heat up or cool down.

Volts = Current X Resistance.

So if you use a voltage supply, as the resistance changes, the current naturally changes to compensate. This will cause the LED brightness to fluctuate.

Where as if you are using a constant Current supply, the voltage will change when the resistance changes and the current will stay the same. The LED will maintain the same brightness as it heats up or cools down.

Think of amps as flow though a pipe. Every point in that straight piece of pipe has the same ammount of flow. So every point in a single wire has the same amperage. If the pipe in this example branches off at a T, then the flow in the two branches adds up to the original flow. Same thing with current in wire. If the wire is spliced, part of the current goes one way, and part goes the other. But it will add up to the total amperage that went into that point.

What goes in goes out.

If you are looking for a driver to run your 5, 10 watt LEDs, you need a current driver that puts out 1 AMP of current and also up to 50 or more.

Remember
Power = Current X Volts
so
50 Watts = 1 amp x volts

Solve for volts by dividing both sides by 1 amp and you get

50 Watts / 1 Amp = Volts = 50 Volts.


So for the 3 Watt LEDs that work best at 700 mA, you would need a driver that puts out 700 mA or one that can be adjusted to put that out. Then you need to figure out how many you need by looking at how many LEDs one will drive.

I suggest shooting an email over to the guy at Rapid LED Home Page He should be able to recommend a set up that will work for you.
 
well this is just to much pain to try to figure out,so i ordered 2 mean well drivers the non dimable for the blue lights,i can run 24 3 watters with that,i may end up with 2 of the dimable ones from rapid led,so instead of ending up with a headach ill do the same thing for now,may play with the whites since they will probably be the biggest problem as far as sunburn goes lol
 
ok so my leds have arrived! i have decided to go with the 3 watt leds,i am not using crees for the first setup so i dont get the good bulbs burnt up lol,the drivers will hopefully be here on monday,if not i am not going to be happy lol
 
solg5hxilb.jpg
 

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