more lighting woes

[Magnum Man]

I have a complex system of lighting for my large group of tanks, I use several plant lights with built in timers for back lighting the tanks for 1st light, and last light, and either one or two of the aquarium dawn to dusk type LED lights per tank in the group, all are 36 inch or 48 inch lights...

a pair of tanks ( 45 gallons ) are 36 inch's long, and 24 inch's deep... being deeper tanks, I typically run 2 of the 36 inch lights over those tanks...

having such a complex group of lights, when everything is working, it's amazing - perfect... but with the higher number of lights, my incidence of failure is much more noticeable...

In the last month, I've had 3 lights go down... enough to screw up my perfect world... seems like twice a year, I have to replace some lights... some have been running correctly for 3 years, and some seem to need replacing in less that a year... the LED's are a major improvement in light quality, I just wish the were more consistent and reliable...

sorry for the rant... but I'd rather buy new fish, than replace lighting... if the actual tanks only lasted as long as the new heaters or lighting, I'd be out of the hobby...

 

[GaryE]

I'm probably saying something you know well, but air flow around LEDs keeps them going way longer. I got a big batch of LEDs given to me (lucky guy) 7 years ago. All were used Fluval products from commercial display tanks. Some had run for 2 years.
80% of them are going still, and only one of the three 2019 models has started flashing. I have a couple of antique early LEDs still working well, and love my LEDs.
These lights run the whole range of the products from introduction to the pandemic.

When I first got them, I enclosed two of them, and that wrecked them. The old ones with heavier plastic casings also failed quickly. But the basic strips, some with bells and whistles and some with the need for timers are, touch wood, still going strong. However, a fan comes on in the fishroom an hour before sunrise and runs to an hour after.

 

[Magnum Man]

one thing I've noticed, it seems like if I don't use the the soft start and stop features on the big lights, and use my much cheaper plant lights with timers, for that. and just turn the bigger lights on, manually, they seem to last longer... yes, marginally less hours, but once I'm up, I turn the big lights on, so between start and stop, they are on, at most, a half hour less each day... I don't know if that is enough to see a difference, or if it's the timer feature that is where the problem is???

 

[Magnum Man]

mine are most all mounted on the ceiling 18 inches or more above the tanks, the tanks in this group are mostly open topped, but the lights are well above them... being built in, in a "C" shape, the 2 tanks on the ends, don't have work area behind a long side, so each has a 6 inch fan, that runs during the summer, when it's more humid, and that didn't seem to help...

 

[Colin_T]

Electrical devices (including LED lights and light globes) have built in manufacturing faults so they fail after a period of time. It's usually one LED that burns out and stops the unit working. There are videos on YouTube that show how you can bypass the stuffed LED and make the light work again.

Everyone needs to write to their governments and tell them to enact and enforce laws about manufacturing faults that are deliberately built into electronic devices (ban electronic devices with deliberate built-in faults so they fail just after the warranty runs out). These things cost customers $billions annually and add to e-waste that is screwing up the planet. All companies do this and it's been going on for decades and needs to stop.