I am not a good DIY, and to be honest afraid of electricity. So, I am interested in buying an existing LED lighting unit. Most of these come with brackets and you don't have the possibility to vary the height of the lights. What about heat production? Is it true that in summer times you would need a fan to cool your water?
For your info: Montreal gets easily up to 35 degrees in the months from June - August.
There are well spaced retail LED luminaires out there however they are designed for reef and far too powerful in reality for planted. They are also expensive because they are much more powerful units designed for marine/reef setups. 4-5x or more powerful than we need.
What I would sugget is where you have linked to 2 luminaires in your other thread that it would be best to ignore the ones that make the same mistake as the flouro luminaires. If you have to use retail setups then try and buy 2 or 3 single linear ones. By that I mean you can then space them out as you would with a DIY luminaire where you have 2 or 3 rows of LEDs.
The ones you linked to have basically taken the flouro luminaires which were designed with 'aesthetics' in mind rather than efficiency as they made them slimmer and slimmer and the tubes got closer and closer together.
If you had to choose from the 2 you linked to I would go for the one that has 12 x 1W. The one that has 0.06W in as well seems to me to be a gimmick. Those 0.06W ones should not be counted as anything more than effect........nightlights etc. They will make no addition to the overall photoperiod light.
Don't know if there are any out there but if you could find a luminaire that has 6 x 1W or 3 x 3W LED in a single line then I would buy 2 or 3 of those rather than 1 unit with the same LED but 'squeezed' into a slim unit which only sits over the centre of the tank.
A DIY one for your tank should only cost in the region of $120 to make. I would think there would be someone about in Canada who could help you. maybe on bcaquaria.com forum?
As for the heat issue, that is overstated. These LEDs get red hot. miles hotter than MH even but that is to be expected. They are pushing so much poower through a tiny area that they will get hot, however I would suggest that when you take the heat created over the area of the tank then it is actually less than the flouros. They burn your fingers without heatsinking purely because all the heat is concentrate in a 2-3mm are instead of being spread around a 2cm diam and long tube.
So they are much hotter to touch however when heatsinked they draw the heat away from the tank. upward. Flourescents with reflectors are pushing heat downwards, add on the ballast which gets hot too.
I have fans fitted in mine but haven't used them for the past 2 years. The vents in the side work well enough without needing the fans drawing air through the unit. (My LED luminaire was 3 years old in November and still going with no probs.)
If you can wait for the summer here is a proposition. I am making a new one for myself in the summer and I could lead you through the whole process. I don't like to put everything into my website as it would be unneeded waffle for most but I can give you precise details of what I do. Another option could be that if you are able to make the box for them to sit in with 2cm holes for the LED lenses I can do the electrics for you and post over to Canada.
Quite simple to make a box and then use a 20cm drill bit to cut the holes, then the lenses fit into these holes and you can then just clip the LED with heatsink attached onto the back of the lenses. They are quite literally 'pushfit'.
The final option is the LED strips. These are pretty cool and I already make these for backlighting however I am going to trial them as mainlights on a tank. Everybody suggests they won't work for plants however I'm not as sure of that. These can simply be stuck on the inside of a 'tank lid' and are relatively cheap. Won't know if I can contradict the doubters on that one until I've tried it though which will take a few months so that would wait until the end of the year
Andy
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