Hi bros,
I an starting a serious DIY LED project for my 4ft tank. I am just not entirely happy with the PL light I am using at the moment and I always wanted to switch to LED. I am planning to acquire as many LED (10W minimum) in a trip to H.K. and or China in September. I know that most if not all the LED products come from China, so I am thinking that with a bit of local knowledge, I should be able to get reasonable cheap LED accessories for building i or two unit of 50W LED light panel(s). I know that they are selling the 10W LED for ~$20 at Sim Lim and if I can half that price, I am looking at a reasonable cost for all my raw materials (LEDs, transformers, alu heat sink).
However, I am not an expert in electronic, so would like so serious input on what are the other requirment for such, building the circlus and whatever else, like resistors and the current (amount of A) I will need. Also, would you think that 5 of those 10W LEDs would be enough lumen for a 4ft planted tank?
Any useful input more than welcome!
Will share all the information and photos on the entire project with the Aquotic Quotient community (once project is complete)
first of all find out what is the lumen per watt of the LED you gonna buy and compare it with PL light of your fish tank. There are other parameter like spectrum but then the seller probably don't have any idea about it, especially if it is china product
Hi Shadow,
I looked at AnA's earlier post:" Power LED, brightest so far". He described one such 10W LED as having 900 lumen. Well, I am not sure how accurate this is but I would based on that I would estimate the output for 5 of such LED's to be at least around 4000 lumen. And my tank is ~ 1.5 ft deep so it should be enough, right? How much current does each 10W LED use? I couldn't really figured it out myself. And I also found that AnA used a 10W transitor in his earlier post, so I can use the same for the 5 LED's or not? I am planning to get some 1ft aluminium heat sink blocks and maybe a combination of cool white and yellow LEDs to get increase the spectrum a bit. Does that sounds reasonable?
as far as I know, not many LED manufacture able to reach 90 lm/w. OSRAM or Phillips maybe. Different manufacturer have different efficiency. So you can really generalize all 10W LED have 900 lumen. Then again techonology improve rapidly, I might be less inform
a 36w pl tube outputs around 3000 lumens. assuming no reflector is used, your tank receives about 1500 lumens per 36w pl tube. you should be able estimate the number of leds required.
you cannot really tell how much current a 10w led requires. you need the operating voltage of the led as well.
you need to 'size' heatsinks in order to get an effective solution. a big heatsink can cool the led but it will be heavy and costly.
and white leds are actually blue leds with a yellow phosphor. so it is in a way similar to fluorescent tubes.
thomas liew
thx, tawauboy, I think I have an idea now, but so far haven't found out where to buy cheap high power LEDs in Hong Kong....Originally Posted by tawauboy
you can check out a shop at Blk477 Tampines St43 #01-174. They specialise in LEDs. If you are keen, you can discuss with the uncle there. My friend have a craze in LEDs and he love the shop. They do have strips of LED but you have to ask them. you can google about them "mteccd"
there is no "free lunch".
high power leds is "in vogue" in electronics world. so cheap high power leds will most likely have dubious quality.
if you are still interested in looking for such leds, shenzhen would be a better bet.
thomas liew
thanks bros for the input. I will check out the shop at Tampines first and I will take a short trip to shenzhen when I am in H.K. in September.
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