LED Lighting

Laura and Jim will be hosting the May meeting this Saturday the 12th and it will be the usual of food, drinks, raffle and fun.
 
Doors will be open at 6:00 pm for social talk and the meeting will start at 7:00.  Parking gets a little tight and the city says you can't park on 4th but there is a parking lot a block away.   Meeting is usually held in the backyard so feel free to bring your favorite lawn chair, weather permitting of course.

If you need address/directions, contact a club member.

Best if you park at Mini Mall (where the spaghetti establishment use to be)
 
You will get to see his new frag tank set up in the making.
 
Hope to see you there!

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[Zach]

Recently I have been wanting to upgrade the lighting in my 29g aquarium from 2 t-5s to LED,  I have been trying to research it for a little while, but I'm really not sure how much lighting would be enough.  I plan on having all kinds of corals, a few fish, and clams. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Nate C.]

When I was looking into this myself, I found out that 48 LED's were roughly equivalent to a 250W MH according to the guy from Rapidled.com that e-mailed me back.  I think I calculated it out to be about $300 for the DIY set-up I hope to do one day on our 29.

[EricsNano]

I hate to reference another site, but evilc66 on Nano-reef.com is an absolute wealth on information (along with the LED everything thread they have there). We have some good DIY LED setups around (I just did one myself, but not the way you are referencing).

LED power really depends a lot on optics and the type of bulbs you buy. Cheapy Chinese LEDs don't put out as much power, but they're cheaper. CREEs put out a lot more, but you're going to pay for it.

I myself just did a setup that is gu10 bulbs (yes, like track lighting) that have 3 1watt leds in them. I did 25 bulbs mixed cool white and blue, bought the sockets, and wired it all up. Wound up costing about $200 to fully light a 33long.

It takes some research to build a good LED lighting system for what you want, but it can be done a LOT cheaper than most people realize these days.