• You are viewing the forum as a Guest, please login (you can use your Facebook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft account to login) or register using this link: Log in or Sign Up

calling all led gurus

dansmith

Seedling
Joined
9 Apr 2009
Messages
12
Location
carlin how,cleveland
Hello all, what i would like to know is, are gu10 led's a viable source of light for plants?.
I have seen some 3 watt led's in gu10 form that are 5500k have a 60 degree light spread and also have a built in heat sink. Iam not really into soldering and driver choice and other general wiring issues so i thought these would be ok. If these are ok how many would be the equivelant of a 38 watt t8 ?.These are the tubes i would be using anyway, and three of these equalls 114 watts which equates to 2.1 wpg on my 52 (us) gallon tank(46,uk) . i dont really want to go over 2 wpg and may just use two tubes and however many leds are equivelant to the third tube, this way there will be a reasonable amount of usable light (2 x 38 watt = 1.64 wpg)for the plants(anubias bolbitis, java ferns and crypts) and i should get some glitter lines from the led's.
thanks in advance, daniel.
 
Thanks for reply , i have already browsed this thread(sort of) and it gets a bit more involved than i would like at the moment. I understand that the best led's should be around three watts and between 5000 and 7000k but i am asking about the ones in gu10 bulb form as i think i could easily cobble together some sort of fixture to accomodate these bulbs. At the end of the day i only really want the led's to suppliment the two tubes i plan to use in a cosmetic way ( glitter lines and and more contrast in the shadow areas) but if they add to the the spectrum in a positive way then so much the better. I just wanted to know if these bulbs would be ok and not cause problems and also how many would equate to a 38 watt t8 which these bulbs will replace if ok.
Many thanks,daniel.
 
Sorry i tried to create a link to the bulbs but i am crap with computers. So i will add a bit more info manually.
Led chips= cree .
Led brand=seoul semicon (p4 series).
Luminos flux=180x lumens.
Beam angle=60 degrees.
Fixture=e27.
Colour temp= 5500k.
Built in heat sink.
Polished aluminium lens surround.
 
dansmith,
Any light is a viable source of light for plants. They can be whatever Kelvin value you like. They don't have to be in any particular range and in most cases the Kelvin rating data is useless or misleading anyway. So really, forget about spectrum because the best spectrum is the one you like to look at.

To my knowledge no one has yet measured or compared the photosynthetic radiation value of LEDs versus T8s or T5 (or at least I haven't seen any reports) so any wpg analysis or cross reference would be irrelevant. If you're looking to add drama or special effects to a tank then check some of the LED threads in this section that have photos to give you an idea of what to expect in terms of visual impact. There are some other threads that discuss cost.

Cheers,
 
I think if you have the cash to experiment then go for it. I can't say wether they are any good or not but what we are trying to achieve with the high power LEDs is spread whereas these bulbs (if I am thinking rightly) has several LEDs which defeats what our aims were!!! as they will force you to have more light in one area much like power compacts do.

There is a chap on barrreport who is doing a LED fixture and is then going to compare fluor PAR to LED PAR wit a proper meter.

Current reports from others is that while Lumens are less that PAR is better but always seems to be dependent on the spread which again brings me back to thinking these bulbs may not be so good.

However when noone know then someone needs to experiment for others to know :)

AC
 
Thank you all for the replys,
I think this may all boil down to costs as three of these bulbs cos £27 am not sure if just three would have enough punch to outshine the two t8s to give any contrast or glitter lines. Also going on the amount of lumens per bulb(180), i would need more than 12 of these to give the same lumens as a 38w t8 (2400, dennerle amazon day) for instance. Although i could be wrong as they are a point light source and the lumens are not spread across 42" of glass tube ,but i think i will just stick with flourescents, i know they work. :)
Cheers, daniel
 
Back
Top