My pair of previously mentioned LED spotlights arrived today. Taking a quick peak at work, they appeared to be made with every bit of attention to detail and quality as they were reputed to be online. I plugged one into my coworkers desk lamp and may have unintentionally stunned him with the brightness. These guys are bright, no doubt about it.



I still haven't found the right fixture for mounting these over the tank. For temporary testing purposes, I used a standard reptile lamp fixture I had lying around from a previous turtle tank build. The following photos were taken with the same white balance and aperture, with minimal curve and level adjustments.

My 150 watt metal halide fixture with a 14k bulb:



The PAR38 spotlight in 20k with 40 degree optics:



As a color sensitive designer, I should have known better than to switch both the lighting technology and the color spectrum at the same time. I find the change to be more than a little extreme. The spot is about as tight as I expected at six inches off the water, but the blue is much darker than I anticipated. I expect this is exaggerated by the spotlighting.

Also I've noticed that shadows cast by corals and rocks within the light create an unnatural blue/yellow banding on the substrate and rock. This above all else is bothering me right now:



Even combining the spotlight with my standard MH fixture, the colors do not blend. The LED clearly overpowers the MH in the area of its spotlight, and the same blue/yellow banding is visible.

I will hold out final judgement until I can install both lights over the tank at the same time. How the corals react to two different light points will be interesting, but the most important factor right now is the overall aesthetic of the tank. I don't want to turn a decent looking aquarium into a dance floor with these lights.

Labels: Equipment, LED, Lighting, Reef Aquarium

Google has ended FTP publishing support for Blogger, a system I've been using for several years on this and other blogs. I've switched this over to their custom domain service temporarily, email me if anything is broken for you.

Apparently the "blogger bar" is no longer optional there is a simple CSS declaration to remove it. I'll probably look into moving to a more modern publishing system like Tumblr in the near future.

Labels: Site

After some deliberation, I've settled on an LED lighting choice: a pair of PAR38 LED spotlights from nanotuners.com. I chose a pair of the 20k lights, in 40 and 60 degree optics. I'm hoping this will give a much bluer appearance to my aquarium compared to the 14k bulbs I've been using in my metal halide fixture.



These bulbs offer some important advantages over the dedicated LED fixtures I was previously considering. And after reading this thread from the light's creator, I knew that intensity and coverage would not be an issue. If anything, I can expect these LEDs to provide more light intensity than my current 150watt metal halide over certain focused areas.

Price
At $120 each, these LED fixtures cost just a little more than a metal halide bulb. When you consider a usable lifespan of up to 5 years, that works out well for the wallet.

Flexibility
Using standard lighting sockets, these LEDs can be adapted to any tank size, unlike a dedicated fixture. If I need more light in the future I can simply add another lamp. If one LED burns out, the entire unit doesn't need to be serviced. Flexibility in positioning is also a big win with these LEDs. By raising and lowering the spotlight, intensity and coverage area can be dramatically changed.

Labels: Equipment, LED, Lighting